Not Reached by the Frost
by Third Crow
Summary: Stevie has made a life for herself in the modern world. Will old secrets and old sins destroy her world just as she finally got used to it? This is the sequel to The Sword for Its Sharpness and Things Time Cannot Mend. fem!Steve
1. Chapter 1

Chapter 1 - Stevie

January 8, 2014, 8:30 a.m.

* * *

_All that is gold does not glitter._

_Not all those who wander are lost;_

_The old that is strong does not wither,_

_Deep roots are not reached by the frost._

_J. R. R. Tolkien_

* * *

The walls of Zorba's gleamed with burnished copper pots, their warm glow at odds with the flat gray sky outside the cafe. Through the window, Stevie watched the few pedestrians hurry off to work, collars turned up against the cold. The smell of the cafe was comforting around her - strong coffee, butter, cinnamon and lemon. Maggie was a solid weight in her lap. The girl didn't like highchairs - she preferred to be held, and Stevie, perhaps guilty for her occasional and unpredictable absences, always obliged. She looked down at her daughter's mop of dark hair, already unruly despite that morning's combing. And where had her barrettes gone? Stevie sighed and kissed her curly head, inhaling to catch her daughter's scent. The girl would pull off clips the moment Stevie's back was turned, resisting any attempt to tame her hair.

"Little monkey," Stevie murmured.

Maggie reached up and touched her mother's cheek with a chubby hand.

"Mama," she said. "Cake, mama!"

"Alright, alright!" Stevie laughed. "Open up." She crumbled a bite off her slice of lemon pound cake and Maggie opened her mouth obediently, like a baby bird.

"Alright there, Captain?" The waiter was a tall young man named Jacob, with one of the carefully cultivated beards that was – surprisingly – fashionable these days. "Can I get you another?"

"Yes, please." He returned her small cup filled to the brim. She took a sip and sighed happily – good Greek coffee, sweet and strong and simple - nothing like those hot milkshakes people tried to pass off as coffee these days.

Stevie had moved in last month, and her little top-floor apartment was in the building next door. The ceilings slanted inward to create a cozy little nook, and the tree branches outside the tall windows gave the impression of living in a treehouse. She'd seen some old nests wedged securely into the boughs – maybe the birds would return in spring. How lovely that would be for little Maggie, growing up surrounded by birdsong.

_Not that we get to spend much time at home_, Stevie thought ruefully. The last month had been a whirlwind – between moving in and getting used to her new job she hadn't even had time to cook the meals whose ingredients she had so optimistically bought and stashed in the shining cabinets of her new kitchen. She was pretty sure the potatoes were sprouting in there. After a long day at work, it was just too easy to run down to Zorba's for a gyro. But now that she had some actual vacation time was she using it to get to know the city? No – she was going back to New York for a few days with Tony and Pepper.

_Ah well,_ Stevie thought. _There will be plenty of time to play tourist. _Maggie reached suddenly for her coffee cup and she shifted it quickly away, to the girl's protests.

"That's not for you, sweetheart," Stevie soothed. "You have enough energy as it is."

In her pocket, her phone played the rock song that Tony had set as the ringtone for his own calls. She pulled it out, trying to negotiate pressing the "answer" button while keeping the phone out of her daughter's sticky grasp.

"Hey, Rogers," Tony's face filled the screen. Maggie grabbed for the image, calling "To-to! To-to!"

"Whoa!" Stevie laughed. "Hold on..." She put the phone flat on the table, out of Maggie's reach, and pressed the button that projected a holo-display from the phone's screen. The face of Tony Stark hovered in the air. Mollified, Maggie bounced in Stevie's lap and giggled.

"Hey, Mags!" Tony grinned and waved at the girl. "Ready for our visit? I have a lot of fun new toys for you to play with."

"To-to!"

"Happy's on his way to pick you up already. Ready to deploy, Rogers?"

"We are packed and ready for action. Ready for a great time with Uncle Tony and Aunt Pepper, right, Maggie?"

"Well..." Tony rubbed the back of his head. "About that...Pepper...won't be here."

"What? Is she okay?"

"She's fine," Tony said hurriedly. "She just wanted a bit of a...break. She's at her sister's upstate."

"Oh, Tony," Stevie sighed. What she was about to say next was cut off by the "incoming call – urgent" icon in the corner.

"Hold on, I've got to take this," she said. "Don't hang up – you aren't off the hook yet."

She made a mid air swiping gesture that interrupted Tony's grumbled reply. The face that replaced his was Natasha's.

"Na-na!" Maggie reached out to the woman – completely unsurprised by the faces of her friends hovering in the air. What still seemed like magic to Stevie was ordinary to her daughter.

_Maybe that's how it always is,_ Stevie reflected.

"Hey, _kiska_." Natasha gave Maggie a warm smile, then turned an apologetic look at Stevie. "Hey, Stevie. Are you already in New York?"

"Why do you ask?" Stevie replied, arching one eyebrow.

"Well...there's something of a...situation. A situation of the...hostage...variety."

Stevie sighed. She had the feeling her vacation was already over.

"Any nonclassified details?"

"Indian Ocean. Ship full of scientists."

"Full?"

"Ship's crew plus research staff. Sixty-four people."

Stevie whispered a curse under her breath, then kissed Maggie's hair guiltily. "Alright," she said. "Briefing at the Triskelion?"

"One hour. Sorry, Rogers." She waved at Maggie. "Sorry _kiska_. For what it's worth, it should be an easy job. In and out. I'll make it up to you both, I promise."

Natasha disconnected, and Tony's tired face reappeared.

"Ready to rake me over the coals?" He asked.

"It'll have to wait. Natasha called. There's a 'situation' in the Indian Ocean that requires my unique skills." Stevie shifted Maggie to her other knee. "Looks like the vacation is postponed."

"For you. Maggie's not going, is she? She can still come out. Send her with Happy. We'll have a great time."

"What? Alone? I don't know..." While Tony was a good man, and undoubtedly devoted to Maggie, Stevie wasn't entirely sure she'd trust him to watch a houseplant without Pepper.

"Hey, you left her with Barton. You don't trust me? I'm her godfather!"

"Godfather, hm? I seem to remember you being conspicuously absent from her christening."

Tony opened his mouth, closed it, rubbed his forehead. "I'm sorry. You said you forgave me for that."

Stevie saw the dark circles under Tony's eyes, the unmistakable weariness. Pepper had told her that he didn't sleep, stayed up working on new suits at all hours of the night, woke up with nightmares. Stevie wondered what he and Pepper had fought about.

"I did. I do. Forgive you." Stevie said. Maggie had seized her spoon when she wasn't looking and was beating on the table. Stevie tried to reclaim it, and the girl clung to it with an obstinate "No!" Stevie gave up.

"Natasha said it won't take long," she continued. "When it's over, we can come straight to New York. In the meantime, I think you should get some rest. You don't look too good."

Tony looked like he was about to argue, then smiled ruefully. "You know how to compliment a man, Rogers. I'll tell Happy to turn the car around."

"See you soon."

Tony's face disappeared, and the call disconnected with a soft beep.

In her apartment, Stevie unpacked and repacked with all the efficiency her military career had instilled in her. _Change of clothes and pajamas for Maggie. Extra diapers. Special blanket. Snacks. And Zadu, of course. _The strange-looking doll – a gift from Bruce - had been through the wash a few times and lost some hair, but Maggie wouldn't fall asleep without it. "Zadu" was what Maggie had named the doll as soon as she saw it. The name may have meant "yellow" or "flower" - the doll did have a large yellow flower in what was left of her fuzzy yarn hair – but the true meaning was an enigma.

Stevie looked around the apartment and sighed. She had worked hard to make it at least appear "lived-in." She had scoured second-hand shops for scuffed furniture and dog-eared books, crowded the rose-colored walls with charcoal sketches and watercolors she'd made during her sleepless early days of motherhood. Central Park in winter. A huge ship being built in the Brooklyn Navy Yard. The exterior of an Italian cafe, two figures just visible through the window, faces golden in the lamplight, one dark-haired, one blonde. She touched the glass, just over the dark-haired figure's face.

"Unexpected mission. Wish me luck."

Stevie scooped up her daughter from where the girl was trying to climb into the threadbare love seat.

"Well, Mags," she said as she locked the apartment and hustled down the stairs to the front door, "looks like the vacation is on hold. I'm glad you're too young to be disappointed."

Back outside, Stevie pulled a woolly hat over Maggie's curls to keep her from the cold and the girl gave her a bright, baby smile. Her eyes were a long-lashed, vivid green - so much like Bucky's that Stevie felt a sudden pang of sadness. It could still take her by surprise, even now. How much she missed him.

"Excuse me." A voice interrupted Stevie's reverie.

A silver sedan had pulled up to the curb, tinted window rolling down to reveal Natasha's fox-like grin. "Can you direct me to the Smithsonian? I need to pick up a fossil."

"You're hilarious," Stevie grumbled, pulling open the rear door.

Natasha stuck out her tongue at Maggie as Stevie struggled to buckled her into the carseat.

"Were you watching me?" Stevie asked. "Your timing is uncanny."

"Wouldn't you like to know?" Natasha said. "Now get in – we've got a boat to save."

* * *

**We're back in action! A big thank you to readers old and new! **

**If you are new - this will make more sense if you read the first two entries in the series - The Sword for Its Sharpness and Things Time Cannot Mend.**

**Unlike my past stories, I've already written most of this one - about 26 chapters. I will try to update weekly, hopefully finishing up the remaining chapters as I post these. **

**Not a lot of historical research went into this story - but Zorba's is a real restaurant, and it's next door to the building used for Steve's apartment in the Winter Soldier movie.**

**As always, I welcome your comments!**


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter 2 - Stevie

January 8, 2014, 9:30 p.m.

* * *

The ocean was black below the quinjet as it raced at supersonic speed toward sixty-four captured scientists, twenty-five pirates, and a terrorist named, of all things, Georges Batroc. Over their headsets, SHIELD Commander Maria Hill briefed Stevie, Natasha, Rumlow and a four-man STRIKE team on Batroc's history and demands.

"He's a French Algerian," she said in her brisk, no-nonsense voice. "An adjutant in the Foreign Legion turned intelligence operative turned mercenary. According to his profile, he's a master of _savate_ and kickboxing with thirty-six successful kill missions. He's asking for a million dollars right now to release the ship and all the scientists unharmed, and he's never been squeamish about killing hostages."

"And he's an arrogant son of a bitch," Rumlow added. "Or he wouldn't think he could pull this off."

Stevie grunted in acknowledgment. Batroc must be aware of the kind of resources SHIELD could bring to bear. And yet...he took this job anyway. For whom? _Must be one hell of a payday._

"What about his team?" Natasha asked.

"A motley crew," Hill replied. "Pirates, mercenaries. Mostly French. No strange abilities or alien weapons that we know of."

"Garden-variety assholes," Rumlow said with his wolfish, crooked grin. "Didn't know there were still any of those left."

"Anybody else surprised it wasn't the Ten Rings?" Stevie asked. "I feel like they just dropped off the map after that actor disappeared."

"What's the matter, Captain?" Hill asked over the headset. "Feeling slighted? Dance card a little empty?"

"In my experience," Stevie replied, "the calm often comes before the storm."

Outside, thunder grumbled. Stevie's harness dug into her shoulders as the Quinjet lurched through a patch of turbulence. Something was nagging at her memory, something to do with the Ten Rings...a black-haired woman in a blue coat...she felt a sudden stab of pain in her head and rubbed her temple.

"Speaking of dance cards..." Natasha interrupted Stevie's thoughts. "How was your date with Raff?"

Stevie groaned. "Do we have to do this now? You're as bad as Pepper. Except she sets me up with vegan philanthropists and you set me up with tattooed guitarists."

"Raff didn't have a tattoo."

"Not where you can normally see it, no."

Natasha raised an eyebrow. "Did he…?"

"If you were going to say 'Did he decide to take his shirt off and jump in a fountain?' Then yes. Yes he did."

Natasha ducked her head, hiding a grin behind her hair. "Raff can be a bit...spontaneous."

In his seat, Rumlow wasn't even trying to conceal his laughter.

"You know who's a good friend," Stevie said. "Rumlow here. Rumlow has never – not once – tried to fix me up on a date with anyone. You could be more like Rumlow."

Natasha rolled her eyes.

The rangy man had finally stopped chuckling. "Hey boss, I almost forgot. I have something for you." He dug in a duffel bag and tossed Stevie a doll. Stevie turned it in her hands. It was made with the proportions of a young child – chubby arms and legs, a rounded face topped with white-blonde hair. She moved the doll's arm and a slightly tinny rendition of _Let it Go _filled the cramped airplane. The STRIKE agents turned from their own conversation curiously.

"Princess Elsa," Rumlow said unnecessarily over the music. Stevie had lowered the doll's arm, but it wasn't shutting off. "I got her for my nieces, but they have about four each already. I thought your girl might like it."

"Thanks." As always, when she was away on a mission, Stevie felt a prick of guilt for leaving her daughter behind. "You'll need to hold onto it for a bit, though. I didn't bring a pack."

"What did you think of the movie?" Natasha asked. "I mean, what was Disney doing back in your day? _Sleeping Beauty_?"

"_Snow White_ was the princess movie of my youth, actually." She had been...what eighteen? Nineteen? Her father had still been alive. She had taken him to see it and he had fallen asleep halfway through, to her gentle embarrassment. She had thought it was magical – a fairy tale come to life. And in color! She smiled and shook her head. How easy it had been to impress people back then.

"The music was catchy," Stevie said. "I'm glad that the princess got to save herself."

"Agree," Natasha said. "You should see _Brave._ Great mother-daughter story."

"_Tangled_ is more fun," one of the STRIKE agents interjected. "Flynn Rider is a great character."

"Are you done?" Hill's voice interrupted them. "You're one minute from the Lemurian Star. Also, the best princess movie is _Mulan_."

The team stood and the hatch was opened. Stevie checked her weapons, called up her mental map of the ship's layout. She would be going in up top to clear out as many pirates as possible, while Natasha would cut off potential reinforcements from below decks. Then, Rumlow and STRIKE would free the hostages while Stevie apprehended Batroc. Stevie could smell the ocean, feel the cold air whipping strands of hair out of her braid. It was time to jump.

"Captain," Maria Hill's voice came over Stevie's headset.

"Last minute info for me Agent Hill?"

"I have a cousin, you know. If you're looking. He's really nice. "

"Oh, don't you start," Stevie said, and jumped out of the plane into the darkness.

She had jumped without a chute so she could come up faster and go in first, with less chance of being seen. That was the tactical reason. But really Stevie loved diving through the air like a hunting falcon, nothing in her way. It was almost like flying. She cut through the water in a clean, arcing dive. The sea was icy cold, and her body felt effervescent with the shock of it, powerfully alive.

Her braid streamed water down her back as she scaled the chain of the sea anchor on the boat's bow and looked over the rail, matching the map in her head with the real boat in front of her. A sentry stood just a few feet from her, facing away. In her dark blue stealth suit, she blended into the shadows on the prow. She hopped lightly over the rail and dropped him without a sound. _One down. Twenty-four to go._ Speed and surprise were essential now. If Batroc found out she was here, he would kill the hostages.

She ran across the deck, came around a corner and hurled her shield at another sentry, catching it as she leaped over his prone body. Another, and another – kick, punch, slam – she barely slowed down. She flung one man into a wall and his partner came at her with a knife, slashing at her eyes. She seized his wrist and snapped it with one hand as she kneed him in the face. Behind her, the first man was moving, reaching for an alarm. She caught the knife before it hit the deck and threw it, pinning his hand to the wall. He barely had time for a gurgled scream before she kicked him in the head. _Seven down. Eighteen to go. _She was coming up to the edge of the forecastle. _Batroc will be on the bridge. _

She leaped from the forecastle to the main deck, four men immediately turning as she landed. She flung her shield hard at the wall behind her, and dove under it as it rebounded, hitting one pirate in the chest. In the time it took the shield bounce off the wall and back to her she had flung a second pirate over the rail and kneed a third in the head. She caught her shield just as the fourth man brought his machine gun to bear.

"_Ne bouge pas!" _

There was a shot, and the man dropped. Rumlow landed on the deck and unclipped his parachute.

"Thanks," Stevie said.

"Yeah," he replied dryly. "You seemed pretty helpless without me."

Natasha and the STRIKE team dropped lightly from the sky like blackbirds, immediately fanning out into their positions. Natasha jogged a few steps to catch up to Stevie as she strode toward the bridge.

"There's a guy I know who works at the VA. Former paratrooper. He's cute."

"How about you secure the engine room, and then find me a date?" Stevie asked.

"I'm multitasking!" Natasha called out, and jumped over a rail.

Stevie rolled her eyes, but she couldn't help chuckling. She'd probably end up going out for coffee with the paratrooper within the week. Maybe he'd even keep his shirt on.

The bridge was at the top of a four-story superstructure down at the stern. Stevie used walls and railings to climb to a catwalk and shot a tiny listening device at the window. She pushed the button that patched her headset into the device feed. _Hope my French is still up to snuff._

"_Call Durant," _A deep voice said. Though the accent was strange to her ears, Stevie could still understand him. _"I want this ship ready to move when the ransom comes." _A deep voice.

"_Yes, Batroc." _Another voice answered. "_Durant, start the engines."_

Stevie checked the plan in her head, her mental countdown. By now Natasha would have engaged the pirates in the engine room. Rumlow and STRIKE would be approaching their positions outside the galley where the hostages were being held. Her body was tight as a piano wire, but her mind was calm.

"_Radio silence from SHIELD, Batroc."_ They were getting edgy. The moment was coming. This was the edge of the knife. It all had to go off at the same moment, or the hostages could be lost.

Stevie opened a channel to the rest of the team. "Targets acquired," she murmured.

Rumlow answered. "STRIKE in position."

Nothing from Natasha. "Natasha, what's your status?"

"Hang on," she answered. There was the noise of impacts and a few strangled cries. "Engine room secure."

Stevie crept along the catwalk, closer to the bridge. Through the window, she could see Batroc pacing. He turned to face away from the glass.

_Now._ "On my mark," Stevie said. "Three. Two. One."

She hurled her shield through the window, launching herself from the railing after it. Batroc was lucky – and fast. He ducked and her shield hit his lackey instead. By the time she got into the room, he was sprinting out the door. She yanked her shield from where it was embedded in the bulkhead and followed as quickly as she could. The ship was like a maze – plenty of places for Batroc to disappear. She emerged on the deck between two high walls – no sign of the pirate.

Rumlow's voice came over her headset. "Hostages en route to extraction. Natasha missed the rendezvous point, Captain. Hostiles are still – down!" His voice was cut off by gunfire and shouts.

"Rumlow!" Stevie said. "What's happening?"

Something must have gone wrong with his connection. Through static she heard more shots, and someone said, "Man down!"

_Shit._ Was it a hostage? Or one of hers?

"Natasha, Batroc is on the move," Stevie said into her communicator. "STRIKE has engaged hostiles. Circle back to Rumlow and protect the hostages." Nothing. _Was she hurt? Dead? _

"Natasha!"

Batroc leaped out from around a corner. Stevie barely got her shield up in time to catch his kick. _He _is _fast_. And strong. He turned a series of leaps into a spinning kick aimed at her head, followed up with punches, jabs, knees. _Is this savate?_ She'd never seen anything like it before. She was forced to give ground, dodging and blocking with her shield. Finally, she got him in a lock and threw him over her head – but he cartwheeled out of the fall like an acrobat and came up grinning.

"_I thought you were more than just a pretty face,_" he said. He had cold eyes, empty. Arrogant. The eyes of a killer. The eyes of Johann Schmidt, of Loki, of every bastard who thought he had the right to kill other people.

_I'm going to put you away, you son of a bitch._

She holstered her shield behind her back, tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. Gave him a sweet showgirl smile.

"_On va voir," _she said. _We'll see._

Stevie closed the distance fast, and attacked in an explosive flurry of punches, not giving Batroc space to use his fancy footwork. When he tried to swing at her, she ducked under the blow and punched him in the chest, knocking him back. He came at her low, trying to sweep her legs out from under her, but she snap-kicked him in the knee. He cried out in pain and stumbled backwards away from her. His eyes cut to the side. Looking for an escape route.

_You don't get away._

Stevie launched herself at Batroc and tackled him around the chest. The impact drove him backwards into a door which burst off its hinges. They slammed into the floor, Stevie on top of him, the back of his head hitting with an audible crack. Stevie waited one breath, two. Her heart was hammering. Batroc didn't move.

"Well, this is awkward."

Stevie's head jerked around at the sound. It was, impossibly, Natasha. There she stood, at a bank of computers, blue light from the screen casting her face into strange lines. The shadows turned her habitual one-sided smirk into a sinister rictus.

"What are you doing?" Stevie asked.

"Backing up the hard drive," Natasha said dryly, eyes on the screen as she typed. "It's a good habit to get into."

Stevie felt a surge of anger at the other woman's calm. Someone had been shot – one of her men could be dead. She pushed herself to her feet and covered the distance between them in two long strides. Natasha shifted as she approached, but didn't back down. Didn't even make eye contact.

"Rumlow needed your help. What the hell are you doing here?" On the screen, she saw file icons flicker open and closed, a green progress bar edging towards completion. Stevie didn't know much about computers, but she could recognize this. "You're...taking intel?"

"Whatever I can get my hands on," Natasha replied.

"Our mission is to rescue hostages."

"No, that's your mission" Natasha said. The progress bar was complete. She pulled a large USB drive out of a port and zipped it into a pocket. "And you've done it beautifully."

She tried to walk to the door, but Stevie seized her by the arm.

"Don't you dare patronize me. You've jeopardized this whole operation."

Finally Natasha looked at her, with that same damned smirk. For the first time, Stevie was tempted to slap it off her face.

"I think that's overstating things..."

Out of the corner of her eye, Stevie saw Batroc stagger to his feet, not as unconscious as she had thought. As he lunged for the door, he pulled something from a pocket and threw it. Stevie deflected it instinctively with her shield just as she realized what it was.

_Grenade._

Stevie grabbed Natasha around the waist and jumped with her through a bank of windows, just as the grenade exploded, filling the computer room with fire and noise.

* * *

**Thanks to everyone for reading! **

**This chapter follows the movie pretty closely - events will diverge from the movie, then reconverge, then...well, you'll see. :-)**

**The singing Elsa doll was one of the most popular Christmas gifts of 2014. Never let it be said that I don't do my research!**

**As always, I welcome your comments and reviews, both positive and constructive.**


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter 3 – Wanda

January 9, 2014, 4:30 a.m.

* * *

The twins had arrived early – a shockingly uncommon feat, Wanda reflected, for someone whose brother could run faster than the speed of sound. Hopelessly jet lagged from the seven-hour time difference between DC and Afghanistan, they decided not to stay in their hotel. Wanda and Pietro had been briefed that this American capitol could be dangerous – but really, who in this sad city could be as dangerous as they were? They wandered aimlessly in the night, young and unafraid.

There was a special smell in a city this early, Wanda thought. Cold and empty. A stinging rain was falling, and she turned up the collar of her coat. To her left, a marquee sign proclaimed "Georgetown" - half the lights burned out. She had a sudden apocalyptic feeling, a dreamlike impression that everyone in the city had died except for her and her brother, two ghosts adrift. Or was it a foreboding? She shivered. Pietro blurred out from beside her and a moment later reappeared with two cups of convenience store coffee.

"Where did you get those?" She asked, not taking the cup he held out to her.

"The man was practically asleep on his feet," Pietro said. "I don't think he even noticed."

"Did you pay him?"

Pietro rolled his eyes.

"Yes, Mom. I left the money in his pocket like a good boy."

Wanda replied with a flat stare.

"I swear! Just take it – God! See if I do anything nice for you again."

Wanda smiled as she took the cup, holding it up to her face so she could smell the steam. Such little things seemed almost unbearably poignant to her. Walking in an unfamiliar city. The warmth of the cup soaking through her gloves. Her brother's mind a comfortable presence bumping up against her own. She could almost pretend that she was free to go wherever she wanted. She looked up and sighed, the cloud of her breath rising into the pre-dawn darkness.

They had reached the waterfront, and they turned to walk along the river. The early morning sounds were soft – their footsteps on the concrete, the lapping of the water, the almost imperceptible hiss of the rain. Wanda sipped her coffee. The sweetness of the creamer failed to cover the bitterness of the burnt grounds.

A sound...no a shard of thought. Wanda turned. There, on the steps leading up from the walk, a shapeless bundle, an old sleeping bag.

No. An old man.

"What?" Pietro said.

She was already moving toward the stairs. Pietro blurred to get there before her, but she held up a hand to keep him back. The man looked up at them, in his eyes no hope, no fear. Empty resignation. She'd seen that look before, oh yes. After the bombs fell in Novo Grad.

She crouched in front of the man and handed him her coffee cup, folding her hands around his own as he held it. She met his eyes, and he started as if she'd shocked him. After a few moments, he smiled.

Wanda stood up and straightened her skirt before walking on. Pietro was beside her. She felt his question in the air between them.

"Even sad people have some happy memories," she said softly. He took her hand.

Ahead of them, suddenly, the Triskelion loomed out of the dark. They both stopped walking to stare at it. In spite of its lights she saw it as a hulking shadow. Pietro handed her his coffee and she took a sip, handing it back. It was time to see Pierce.

* * *

**Hello gentle readers! It's a cold, gray afternoon here in Colroado. I hope you are snug and warm wherever you are reading.**

**In this chapter we meet some characters who are new to this story. Honestly, I'm as surprised to see them as you are. They butted in rather late in the writing process and they've been stealing scenes ever since. I hope you have fun getting to know them. As always, I look forward to hearing what you think.**


	4. Chapter 4

Chapter 4 - Stevie

January 9, 2014, 7:30 a.m.

* * *

Normally, Stevie loved walking into the Triskelion. The glass roof bathing the wide lobby in bars of sunlight, the huge SHIELD eagle, gunmetal gray, poised for flight. She loved the busyness, the grandness of the place. Greeting the agents, analysts, custodians. It made her feel like she was part of something. But this morning, she stormed from the landing pad to the elevators without even looking around herself.

Fury's office was large but spare – no keepsakes. No personal effects. The man himself sat in a high-backed leather chair, staring through a large bank of windows at the steely skies above the Potomac, chin in his hand as though deep in thought.

"Want to tell me why you lied to me?" She said, not bothering with preliminaries.

"I didn't lie," he responded calmly. Of course, he knew what she was talking about immediately. "Agent Romanoff had a different mission than yours."

"Which you didn't feel obliged to share."

The situation on the ship hadn't been as bad as she had feared. One of the STRIKE team had been shot in the thigh and a hostage had broken her wrist in the fracas. But Batroc had escaped, and Stevie was still full of unspent anger.

"I'm not _obliged_ to do anything," Fury said, still facing the river.

Fury was never demonstrative, but this...iciness. This was unusual.

"The hostages could have died." She said.

Finally, Fury turned the chair toward her. His dark-skinned face was as impassive as a block of wood. He placed his elbows on his black, empty desk, forming a perfect diamond with his reflection.

"I sent the greatest soldier in history to make sure that didn't happen."

So now she was the figurehead again. Trotted out for appearances - too naive to be told the actual plan. Stevie's jaw tightened in irritation. The last person to keep mission secrets from her had been Bucky, and he at least had the decency not to do it while she was actually on a mission with him.

"Soldiers trust each other," she bit off the words. "That's what makes it an army."

Their voices had grown progressively louder with each reply, and now they were on the point of shouting at each other. Fury stood.

"Last time I trusted someone," he growled, "I lost an eye." He looked her dead in the face. His one remaining eye was hard as a chip of flint. "I didn't want you doing anything you weren't comfortable with. Romanoff is comfortable with everything."

Why had Romanoff been gathering intelligence – in secret - from SHIELD's own ship? Fury was the Director of SHIELD. What could be on those computers that he didn't already know about?

"I can't lead a mission when the people I'm leading have missions of their own."

"It's called compartmentalization. Nobody spills the secrets because nobody knows them all."

_I know what compartmentalization is, you ass. _She had been working with the French Resistance before Fury had even been born.

"Except you," she said.

Something flickered in in Fury's eye – an emotion she couldn't identify. Uncertainty?

"You're wrong about me." He said, more softly, but no less bitterly. "I do share. I'm nice like that."

"Insight Bay." Fury said when the doors of his personal office elevator had closed behind them.

A synthetic female voice answered. "Captain Rogers does not have clearance for Project Insight."

"Director override – Fury, Nicholas J."

"Confirmed."

The descent was smooth and silent. Fury and Stevie leaned against opposite walls, her arms crossed defensively over her chest. Outside the glass, the morning sun broke through the clouds to strike off the Potomac in a thousand bright splinters of light. Was Maggie already awake? Stevie hadn't even bothered to take a shower or change out of her uniform before barging into Fury's office – she'd been so full of righteous rage. _I'll pick her up after this meeting._ Stevie suddenly remembered – she'd forgotten to reclaim that singing doll from Rumlow. _Ah well. _There would be plenty of time later.

"You know," she said to break the silence. "They used to play music."

Fury chuckled. "I know. My grandfather operated one of these things for forty years."

_Elevator operators. Another casualty of progress._

"My granddad worked in a nice building," Fury continued. "Got good tips. He'd walk home every night, roll of ones stuffed in his lunch bag. He'd say hi, people would say hi back."

He leaned back casually against the rail.

"Time went on, neighborhood got rougher. He'd say hi, they'd say "keep on steppin". Granddad got to gripping that lunch bag a little tighter."

Fury gave her that piercing, one-eyed stare again. Stevie had the distinct impression there was more to this story than idle reminiscence.

"He ever get mugged?" She asked.

Fury chuckled again. "Every week some punk would say 'what's in the bag?'"

There was another pause. He wanted her to draw him out. She obliged, not without irritation.

"What'd he do?"

"He'd show 'em." Fury smiled. "Bunch of crumpled ones...and a loaded .22 magnum."

_Ah. And there it is. The point._

"Granddad loved people." The smile faded. "But he didn't trust 'em very much."

They sank below the level of the river, sunlight replaced by harsh floodlights. Stevie looked behind her, and her mouth dropped open. In an immense machine bay, a massive shadow loomed up out of the darkness. Stevie had a disorienting moment of double consciousness, her memory of the Red Skull's base in the Alps, the Valkyrie in its hangar, overlaying what she saw.

But this was not the Valkyrie. _No. God – it must be a hundred times that size. _

It looked like a helicarrier, but the lines were different from the last SHIELD carrier Stevie had seen, back before the Battle of New York. Sleeker. Predatory. The scale was incredible. She hadn't realized how big it was until she saw the workers scuttling around it, like fleas on a dog's back. And still the elevator sank down and down and down.

Fury must have noticed her gaping.

"Yeah I know," he said, a little smugly. "It's a bit bigger than a .22."

One of the side panels of the drone had been slid open, and four workers were using a crane to maneuver something like a torpedo with wings inside.

_A drone. _

The carrier must be able to hold hundreds, thousands.

_What threat could this possibly be designed to face?_

As if her read the question in her face, Fury spoke again.

"This is Project Insight. Three advanced helicarriers controlled by a next-generation AI connected to a network of targeting satellites. The other two are off LA and NYC. Distributed warfare."

She had done her homework about the new ways of waging war. Drones like this weren't used to engage armies. They were for "surgical strikes" - assassination by any other name.

"Targeting satellites launched from the Lemurian Star." Stevie felt stupid for not thinking of it sooner. But the revelation only raised a bigger question. Why was Fury secretly collecting intelligence on his own project?

The elevator had finally stopped and they emerged onto the concrete floor, wending their way around workers and machines, the bulk of the Insight carrier like a mountain above them.

"Once we get them in the air, they never need to come down. Continuous suborbital flight, courtesy of our new repulsor engines." Fury pointed at a turbine. Stevie had thought they looked different. _No blades._

"Tony?"

"He had a few suggestions after he got an up close look at our old turbines."

Up close – he had almost been shredded by one, back when Loki attacked the original SHIELD carrier.

Fury led her on, down the huge machine. Stevie could see the cannons sprouting from its flank, each the length of a diesel submarine. Fury didn't seem to find them worth mentioning.

"The Insight carriers are loaded with seven hundred drones, each drone equipped with eight Stark Hellfire missiles. They're fully automated - the drones can reload at the carrier without any human oversight. They're even equipped with 3D printers for on-site repair and replacement."

"I thought Tony stopped making weapons." Stevie said. Fury arched an eyebrow at her.

"Does his suit shoot flowers and rainbows?"

As they walked, a hemisphere of tinted glass became visible, set into the belly of the craft like a huge ball turret without the gun. Its mirror surface turned the bay into a warped, topsy-turvey dreamscape in which her own white face floated like a drowned ghost.

"The computer is the real beauty," Fury said, jolting her out of her thoughts. "The most advanced artificial intelligence ever designed, hooked up to a network of satellites that can practically read a terrorist's DNA before he steps out of his spider hole. Gonna neutralize a lot of threats before they even start."

That was a euphemism if she'd ever heard one.

"I thought the punishment usually came after the crime," she said.

"We can't afford to wait that long."

"Who's we?"

"After New York, I convinced the World Security Council we needed a quantum surge in threat analysis. For once, we're way ahead of the curve."

The thought echoed in Stevie's head in a voice that was not hers._ You're not ready for what's coming._

"You're holding a gun to everyone on Earth and calling it protection."

"You know, I read those SSR files. Greatest Generation? You guys did some nasty stuff."

Stevie's neck flushed._ I'm getting real tired of being condescended to today._

"Yeah," she said. "We compromised. Sometimes in ways that made us not sleep so well. But we did it so that people could be free."

She imagined the carrier looming above the Earth, a shadow in the sky with its great, glass eye always watching.

"This isn't freedom. This is fear."

"SHIELD takes the world as it is, not as we'd like it to be. It's getting damn near past time for you to get with that program, Cap."

Fury was staring at her fixedly. _That was a threat. _She felt cold, then hot. _Why is he showing me this? What is this? _Not for the first time in her life, she felt as if she was walking into a situation of which she understood only the barest shadow. Like being on rotten ice, she thought. Waiting for the cracks to show. Whatever game he was playing – she wanted no part of it.

"Don't hold your breath," she said. As she strode away down the floor of the bay, the Insight carrier watched her with its huge, dead eye.

* * *

**This chapter also follows the canon closely - with some minor changes that will become relevant later. **

**Thank you all. **


	5. Chapter 5

Chapter 5 – The Soldier

* * *

The Soldier awoke as he always did, in agony. His frozen limbs burned as blood and feeling returned to them. He was biting down on a mouth guard, jaw clenched, screaming into it as the apparatus on his face shot a bolt of electricity through his left eye. He tasted blood, rubber, ozone. His mind was a howling emptiness. And then, there was a voice.

"Longing. Rusted. Seventeen. Daybreak. Furnace. Nine. Benign. Homecoming. One. Freight car."

He breathed deep, heaving gasps as his heart rate slowed back to normal. He remembered what he was.

"Welcome back, Soldier."

They removed the apparatus from his face and he took in his surroundings – featureless concrete walls. He was strapped into a high-backed chair. Black-clad guards watched him, hands on stun batons in case he broke free. What country was this? What year? There was no sign.

The man who had spoken stepped closer to him. Blond. Tall. Wire-rimmed spectacles and an understated suit. The Soldier felt a moment of disorientation. He remembered the man being younger – much younger. He had gray in his hair now that he hadn't had the last time, his kindly, sad eyes framed by a network of fine wrinkles.

_How many years...?_

"I still don't see why this is necessary, Pierce."

The Soldier cut his eyes to the side quickly, looking from under his hair. The speaker was a younger man, voice accented. Eastern European. Latverian? No, Sokovian. Good physical condition. Silvery hair swept to the side and a two-day growth of stubble. A girl slouched beside him – small, almost frail-looking, with a long fall of dark hair obscuring her face.

"Why not simply send us?" The young man asked Pierce with a smirk. "Fury would never see it coming. Could it be that you don't trust us?"

"I appreciate your master's consideration," Pierce replied. "I have no intention of wasting her generosity on this. Fury is a friend. I'd rather handle this personally."

Pierce turned back to face the Soldier. Behind him, where he couldn't see, the girl shook her hair back and made a grimace of distaste. The Soldier had a sudden flash of memory – a pale face coming out of darkness, the smell of wet stone, someone standing beside him, just out of sight. He shoved it away. Memory was pain, and confusion. He was purpose.

Techs were removing his restraints warily, flinching backward as he flexed his hands. His right hand was still flesh and bone – his left was steel. For a moment that seemed wrong. The moment faded.

"Soldier," Pierce said. "Good to see you again."

Pierce spoke in English, but the Soldier replied in Russian.

"Mission, Sir?"

Pierce gestured and a guard handed him a dossier labeled "Fury, Nicholas J."

The Winter Soldier felt as close as he ever did to happiness.

* * *

**Hi everyone - he has arrived! My boy, the Winter Soldier. There will be other chapters from his POV coming. It is Veterans' Day weekend here in the U.S. If you are a veteran in crisis, please call the Veteran Crisis Line - 1-800-273-8255 (press 1). Or text 838255. As always, I welcome your feedback. **


	6. Chapter 6

Chapter 6 - Stevie

January 9, 2014, 10 p.m.

* * *

Maggie always gave Stevie a hard time when she came back from an overnight mission, and tonight was no exception. As soon as Stevie put her down in the crib, she pulled herself up and wailed, little face screwed up into such an expression of sorrow that Stevie couldn't help picking her up again. Clint had advised her to "sleep train" Maggie. _Just wait fifteen, twenty minutes,_ he'd said. _She'll cry herself out and be fine. _But Stevie couldn't stand to hear her daughter cry, so she walked back and forth in the small nursery room, humming old, half-remembered songs.

* * *

She had picked up Maggie after storming out of Fury's office – with a quick stop for a shower and change of clothes. The seawater had left crusts of salt in her hair and uniform. _And I probably smell like a fishwife_.

She took Maggie out to breakfast at their favorite coffee house, and tried to enjoy being with her daughter. But her instincts were screaming at her. Something was wrong, terribly wrong. Fury had threatened her. He had shown her that...beast...in the hangar. Why? Why was he stealing information about it? He was the Director of SHIELD, why was he sneaking around? What could be frightening him, of all people?

_And what should I do about it?_

There was no question – allowing Insight to happen would be a huge mistake. But who could she tell? Who could she go to for advice? She remembered Natasha's smirk in the light of the computer screens.

_She already knows_.

Clint and Banner weren't skilled in this particular area. _Tony?_ Maybe. Although Fury had mentioned his contribution to the carriers. Maybe he'd thought it was a good idea. Stevie had shook herself.

_If you can't trust Tony, you can't trust anyone._ But Tony was...impetuous. His help might cause more problems than it would solve.

Finally, Stevie had gone to see Peggy.

They had gone to the trouble of making her room homey – lace curtains in the window, family photos on a mahogany nightstand. Stevie was grateful for that. She couldn't bear to think of Peggy, her Peggy, stuffed in some cement-walled institution that smelled like industrial cleaners. As Peggy dozed, Stevie looked at her photos. There was young Peggy in her wedding dress, spectacular even in monochrome, standing next to a tall, dark-haired man leaning on a cane. Peggy and the husband proceeded into color photographs, stood beside Howard Stark at his own wedding, grew gray and wrinkled, and then, finally, Peggy was alone. In Stevie's arms, Maggie squirmed, wanting to be let down to explore.

"Shush-shush-shush," Stevie said, bouncing the girl in her arms, even though she was already too big to be put off by such old tricks.

Stevie stroked her old friend's hair. It had gone silver, but was still thick and soft. Whoever took care of her had styled it for her into gentle waves. Peggy had kept her hair impeccable all through the war. It would have been terrible if something as commonplace as old age could rob her of her incredible poise.

Peggy's eyelids fluttered.

"Stevie," she breathed. Her voice, gentled by age, was still beautiful.

Stevie smiled. "Hi Peg."

Would she remember this time?

"You're alive." Peggy's voice thrummed with emotion. The sorrow of years. Like a knife in Stevie's heart, every time. "You came back."

"Of course I did," she said, her own sorrow hidden behind her practiced smile. "I promised we'd get an apartment together didn't I? They're putting my bed next to yours. Hope you don't mind roommates."

Peggy chuckled. "As long as you don't snore." Then she noticed Maggie in Stevie's arms. Her eyes widened. "Stevie...Is that…?"

"Her name is Margaret."

Peggy's eye's filled with tears. "Oh, Stevie. I'm so sorry."

Stevie shook her head. "Here." She sat down on the edge of the bed and gently set the stocky toddler in her namesake's arms, helping Peggy hold her.

"My, she's a big one, isn't she? She looks just like him." The girl, surprisingly, stopped squirming and reached out to touch Peggy's silvery hair. "She's beautiful, Stevie. What a life she'll have. I only wish I could have shared it with you both."

"I just hope she's half as brave as you." Stevie gently untangled her daughter's fingers from Peggy's hair.

"What is it?" Peggy asked.

_Still reading me like a book._

"For as long as I could remember, I just wanted to do what's right." Stevie bounced Maggie on her knee, soothing the child to cover her own nervousness. "But something's happened, and I'm not sure what that is anymore. I thought I could throw myself back into it. Follow orders. But it isn't the same."

Peggy arched an eyebrow. "Since when did you follow orders?"

She took Stevie's hand in hers.

"Look," she said. "You saved the world. We rather...mucked it up, I'm afraid."

Stevie snorted. "You didn't. Knowing you founded SHIELD was half the reason I stayed. I could have run away to be an art teacher."

"The world has changed." Peggy's grip on her hand was surprisingly firm, her gaze piercing. "None of us can go back. All we can do is take the world as it is...and do our best..."

Like the sun going behind a cloud, her fire went out. As if that moment had exhausted her, Peggy drifted off to sleep, still holding Stevie's hand.

_The world as it is._ She thought. _Does that mean I should accept Fury's project? The surveillance state? _

Stevie gently kissed Peggy's forehead before she left.

* * *

Maggie had fallen asleep in the car after lunch, and Stevie found herself driving in circles.

When she first moved to DC, she had loved the sight of the monuments. They gave her a sense of timelessness, of history - a place where past and present met - but today, they didn't soothe her as they had before. She considered turning right back around and going to New York, to Tony. But that felt like running away. She passed the Smithsonian.

_Why the hell not?_ She didn't have anywhere else to be.

By the time she found a free meter, Maggie was waking up. Stevie left the stroller in the car and held her daughter in her arms. At first it had been awkward, when the museum people approached her and said they were planning an exhibit about her life. They had even found some of her old journals, with her sketches. They wanted to use them in the exhibit. She'd thought they were lost. She had been tempted to refuse, but asked only that they leave out the most...personal ...sections. They had agreed. They even returned the originals. She had stuffed them on a shelf in the apartment between _Lincoln and His Generals_ and _The Time Machine._

She had made an appearance at the opening, but never since. If anyone recognized her now, she thought she'd die of embarrassment. Stevie pulled up the hood of her jacket and tried to lose herself in the flow of tourists as a serious, newscaster-like voice recited her life story from artfully concealed speakers. It hurt, seeing the pictures of the commandos. Their old uniforms, and hers, on mannequins. The old filmstrips she had made. The picture of herself sitting on top of the tiger tank at La Gleize, hand up in the V for Victory. Maggie began to fuss, probably hungry after her nap. After checking her diaper, Stevie put her down so she could toddle around.

_Why did I come here? _

She looked up, and there he was, larger than life. Glaring out of the photo sullenly. _Bucky. _The voiceover continued heartlessly, triggered by her proximity.

"Best friends since childhood, Bucky Barnes and Stephanie Rogers were inseparable on both schoolyard and battlefield. Barnes is the only Howling Commando to give his life in service of his country."

On a screen next to Bucky's photo, black and white clips played on loop. She and Bucky leaned over a table, pointing at maps. They stood side by side. She said something, and he laughed. There was no sound. She couldn't remember him laughing very much, after Kreichsburg. What had she said? She couldn't remember.

_Buck. _She thought. _What would you do, if you were here? What would you say?_ She could picture him, smoking of course, collar turned up.

_Fuck Fury, _said the Bucky in her head, with his typical bluntness._ And fuck SHIELD._ _You know what you have to do. When have you ever been afraid to call a man out?_

Stevie smiled to herself. _And he'd go with me. To the bitter end._

Maggie was swaying beside her, taking little waddling steps. Stevie swept the girl up and held her in her arms, lips pressed to her plump cheek.

_Thank you, Bucky._

* * *

Maggie finally fell asleep on Stevie's shoulder, head heavy, warm breath tickling Stevie's neck. She hummed and paced for a while longer, then laid Maggie down as carefully as if she were a live explosive. The girl sighed and rolled over in her crib, but stayed asleep. Stevie gave her own sigh of relief. Maggie's little face was so utterly relaxed.

_For her the world is safe._ Stevie thought. _And I'll keep it that way._

She had decided. She would call Fury, tell him where to stick his consultant job. She would go back to New York and stay at Stark Tower. Then she would contact the press, the government, whoever would listen. She had no illusions of mass outcry – whistleblowers weren't universally well received in this modern age – but at least the people would know. They deserved that. They deserved to choose what kind of world they wanted to live in. The exhibit had called her "a symbol to the world". That had to mean something. At least, she would be difficult to ignore.

Stevie shut the door softly behind her and stretched her arms above her head until her shoulders popped. She was in the mood for a bedtime snack. Would Maggie wake up if she made popcorn?

She was walking to her kitchen, when, in the darkened living room, someone turned on her record player.

* * *

**Peggy! I love and miss you so! :-( **

**But she's still a source of inspiration for our Stevie. Maybe, when I write that Falsworth spinoff series, I'll make Peggy a recurring character...**


	7. Chapter 7

Chapter 7 - Stevie

January 9, 2014, 10 p.m.

* * *

Stevie crouched, every nerve on high alert. She did a quick mental inventory.

_Shield by the door. Gun in the safe on top of the fridge. _

There was a knife block, but it was on the counter. The only items to hand were books and the occasional scattered toy. She looked into the living room. A shadow in a black coat put the cover back on her record player and sat down in her armchair with a grunt, bars of light from her half-open blinds slanting across his face.

_Fury?_

For a moment she thought he'd somehow read her mind, divined her choice to reveal Project Insight. It wouldn't be too far fetched, after what she'd seen. She edged closer, straining her senses to try to pick up if anyone else was inside the apartment. And then she smelled it.

_Blood. _

Something was wrong. Very wrong. Stevie stepped out from behind the bookshelf.

"I don't recall giving you a key." She said, over the sound of Aretha Franklin singing about how she'd been drinking again.

"Do you really think I'd need one?" Fury replied, single eye half closed. Humor in his tone. Still so goddamned smug. "My wife kicked me out."

"I didn't know you were married." _In fact,_ _I'm pretty sure you aren't._

"There are a lot of things you don't know about me."

"I know, Nick." She turned on a table lamp and saw blood shining in his neatly trimmed goatee. "That's the problem."

He turned the light off and held out his phone, down at knee level. The text on the screen read "EARS EVERYWHERE."

Stevie was acutely aware of Maggie's presence in the bedroom, just a few feet away. She fought the desire to turn and flee, to scoop up her daughter and run. If someone was watching the apartment, that would be the worst thing to do.

"I'm sorry to have to do this, but I had no place else to crash." Fury had been typing on his phone one-handed while he spoke. When he turned it toward her again, it read "SHIELD COMPROMISED".

"Who else knows about your wife?" Stevie's mind was racing. Who could have done this to Fury, forced him to run with no plan? He was, as Tony had once put it, _the_ spy. Stevie had no doubt his contingency plans had their own contingency plans. For him to be caught flat footed...

"Just," Fury stood stiffly. "My friends." He held his phone down by his side. It read "YOU AND ME."

"Is that what we are?"

"That's up to you."

He stepped toward her – and the window shattered.

Stevie dove across the room, protecting Fury with her body. He cried out in pain as they landed heavily on the floor.

_They'll be coming to finish the job. Commandos breaking down the door any moment. My gun. Maggie! _

Fury seized Stevie's hand and pressed something into her palm. A USB drive_. _Was it the same one from the _Lemurian Star?_ He pulled her close and whispered, painfully, urgently.

"_Don't. Trust. Anyone."_

Something hit the front door – a solid impact, the sound of a boot. Stevie pulled herself along the carpet to where her shield was propped against the wall, whirled and came up just as her door splintered inward, coming face to face with a wide-eyed Maria Hill.

_Don't trust anyone._

Hill took a step forward, as if to go around Stevie to where Fury lay on the floor, but Stevie swept her to the side and pinned her to the wall, shield between them.

"What are you doing here?" Stevie growled.

"He contacted me." Hill's hands were raised, voice high. "He contacted me! Is he alright?"

Stevie looked into Hill's eyes for a moment. They were wide with fear. _What am I thinking? _Hill had led her on so many missions, had held her life in her hands.

Stevie let her go. The other woman ran to Fury, crouched by his side and pulled a walkie-talkie out of her pocket.

"Foxtrot is down. He's unresponsive. I need EMT's."

"Do we have a 20 on the shooter?" came the voice on the other end of the line. Male. Unfamiliar.

Through the tatters of her venetian blinds, Stevie saw a shadow move on the rooftop. A glint of streetlights on metal. She considered chasing him, then she heard her daughter's wail behind her.

_Maggie_.

Stevie burst into the bedroom, where her daughter sat up in bed, howling. Dropping her shield, Stevie snatched the girl up, checking her for blood, for broken bones...Nothing. Nothing. Just a tired, angry baby. Thank God.

* * *

**A late update today! I had a day at home with the kids while the husband was out, so...no time to post until now. ;-)**

**You may notice the conspicuous absence of Agent 13. I eliminated her for...a couple reasons. Mostly because she is complete pointless. Don't me! Or do - I love feedback. :-)**


	8. Chapter 8

Chapter 8 – The Soldier

* * *

In the mission, there was clarity. The Soldier's mind was a snowfield, empty and white. If he had thought to name the feeling, its name would have been peace.

Pierce had ordered Fury eliminated as soon as possible and anything he carried returned to base. Subtlety was a secondary concern. The Soldier had a team at his disposal, who would follow his orders. _Or kill you, if you get out of line_, said the treacherous voice inside his head. He pushed it down. The snow was white, and pure.

The heads-up display inside the Soldier's goggles showed a road map, the target's car a blinking red dot on the wire-frame streets. The team had engineered a few traffic accidents and road closures to steer the target to a more isolated location, where they could work in private.

_The target will suspect the situation isn't normal. He will see through the false escape routes they had planned. He will choose the most direct remaining path. There, he will find me waiting for him. _

"Fury will be suspicious," Pierce had said. "I can't overemphasize how dangerous he is."

_Not as dangerous as I am, _the Soldier had thought, as they fitted his mask over his face, covering him chin to eyes.

Beside him, in the black van, the members of the STRIKE team shifted, trying not to touch him, even by accident. The Soldier saw how they looked at him out of the corners of their eyes. Looked away. Except one. A tall man, powerfully built, a sort of lazy grace that could easily explode into violence. His designation in the field was Wolf. He gave the Soldier a crooked smile, one long canine tooth more prominent than the other.

"How's the hip, gramps?" he said.

Behind his goggles, the Soldier saw the dot that was his target turn off the main road, exactly where he wanted it to.

"He's coming," the Soldier said. He spoke in Russian, but the team all understood. "Be ready."

The Wolf may grumble, but it didn't matter. The target was approaching. The Soldier's whole body tingled. He was...alive.

"Now" he said.

The van crashed into Fury's car from the side, crushing the rear passenger door and pinning the car to a concrete barricade. Emergency vehicles arrived rapidly – decoys who would close off the scene and prevent too many witnesses. The van opened and the team emerged, using the concealment of a false ambulance to open fire at the other car.

"Bulletproof!" Wolf called. "Bring out the ram!"

"No need."

The Soldier punched into the window with his steel hand, wrenched the front door off its hinges. No Fury...but in the floor of the car, a hole, edges still smoking. And under the car, a manhole cover, left carelessly open. Behind his mask, the Soldier smiled.

_Now it's just him...and me._

Some of his team had climbed into the car, searching for anything Fury had left behind. Of course, there was nothing. Except...The airbags had deployed. The Soldier saw a spatter of blood on the white nylon. Fury was injured. Good.

The Soldier walked out into the street, already pulling up the sewer maps, overlaying them on his street maps. Pierce had shown him a map of the SHIELD safehouses in the area – too sensitive to be shared electronically. Fury had been hurt. He would be slowed. He wouldn't pick the obvious choices, but he'd have to stay close, to lick his wounds, to call reinforcements.

The Wolf was talking to the others. The Soldier cut in.

"Take the team. Search SHIELD safehouses inside a ten-mile perimeter. Allow yourself to be seen. Listen for chatter on the lines. Report to me if you hear anything significant."

He turned to go. His gear was in the van.

"Hey." He heard behind him. Wolf, of course. "Hey! Ice Man!"

The Soldier turned.

"So my team and I run down false leads and listen to phones while you go after Fury alone?"

He didn't answer, just looked at the other man flatly. He knew the Wolf couldn't see his eyes or mouth behind his mask. Many people found that intimidating.

"If I wanted to take orders from a human popsicle," Wolf said, "I'd stick with my day job."

The Soldier said nothing. This posturing was wasting time.

"You're one dumb bastard, aren't you?" Wolf said. "Hey, here's a secret. When the time comes, and we don't need you anymore? The boss told me I could put a bullet through your thick skull myself. What do you think about that?"

The Soldier said nothing. In his hazy memory, he recalled others who bridled at being under his command. They were all dead, and he remained.

The Wolf's smile slid from his face.

"You will take your team," the Soldier repeated. "Search safehouses inside the perimeter Listen for chatter. And report to me."

This time he didn't wait to see if the Wolf had anything to add.

One of the false ambulances hid a motorcycle in the back. With his weapons concealed in a pack, the Soldier pulled off toward the safehouse he'd identified. His dark hair blew back from his masked face. He didn't hurry. He didn't need to.

The safehouse was inside a closed antique store, dusty tuxedo in one window, wedding dress in the other, a cobwebbed bridal veil hiding the chipped face of the mannequin. Black dropcloths concealed the rest of the interior. The Soldier planted a listening device on the back door.

Fury's voice came into his ear, "Hustle, this is Foxtrot. I'm at the shop. SHIELD is compromised. We need to..."

The Soldier didn't need to hear more. He kicked the door down, pistol up and two shots fired before it hit the floor.

Fury was well-trained. Despite his surprise, he threw some sort of explosive at the Soldier's face, forced him to take cover behind a threadbare couch. In the second it took for him to look again, Fury had disappeared. The only thing left was a handheld, two-way radio, two spent shell casings...and more blood.

_Got him. He'll be even slower now._ The smile behind the mask was fierce. The Soldier hadn't had a challenge like this is a long time.

He called Wolf.

"I'm at 3844 34th Street. Fury has escaped again. He was calling someone on a two-way radio."

"Of course he did. Fuck. That's a bitch to trace."

"Do it."

He circled in widening spirals, but he didn't really expect to find anything. Fury was just as skilled as Pierce had claimed. The perimeter would cut off his options. He'd have to do something unplanned. Mistakes were inevitable. The sun was setting when the Soldier got the call from Wolf.

"Hey, Ice Man. We found who he was calling. Agent Hill. She's southbound on Massachusetts right now."

"Stay where you are. I'll intercept."

Agent Hill was skilled, but she never saw the Soldier. He ditched the motorcycle and followed her trail from the rooftops. She looked from side to side, doubling back, laying false trails. Finally, she swung by a restaurant, lit up with strands of white Christmas lights, and entered a brick building. The Soldier positioned himself across the street, on the roof of tall, nondescript building of gray brick.

He set up his rifle and used the scope to scan through the windows. Wolf called, impatient for updates. The Soldier ignored him. Hill hadn't left. Wait. The Soldier trusted his instincts. They were all he had. The night was bitterly cold, but he didn't feel it. The ice field in his mind was pure and clean.

_There_.

Inside a room on the top floor, a shadow that hadn't been there before. Was it the target? The Soldier's eyes were sharp, sharper than even someone like Fury would guess. Through a gap in the blinds, he saw a dark-skinned hand, a black coat, a black eyepatch. The soldier felt his heart beat faster. He had him.

The blinds were half closed. A difficult shot to line up. He needed another person to shoot first and break the window, shred the blinds and give him a clear shot. Too late to invite Wolf along now. He'd have to do it all himself. Fury was in an armchair, trying to stay out of view. But the Soldier was nothing if not patient. He'd wait all night if he had to.

There was movement at the edge of the room. A woman. The soldier couldn't see her face, just a long, blonde braid and a white t-shirt.

Memory was pain. And it was pointless. But the Soldier couldn't stop it. He smelled smoke. He was in a church, snow falling through a hole in the roof. Someone sat at his left, just out of sight. He could hear her voice, but he couldn't understand the words. If he turned his head, he'd see her. He just had to turn his head…

A memory of pain shot through the Soldier, so intense that it was like he was feeling it again, annihilating, searing, white hot.

_No!_

He forced the thought away. Fury had stood – his shot was clear. The Soldier squeezed the trigger. Fury fell. The Soldier broke down his gun. His right hand – the hand that was still his – was shaking. He knew he should check, make sure he'd succeeded. The woman was crouched over Fury, head down. In a moment, she would look up. He'd see her face. The thought of it filled him with a terror he couldn't explain. He leaped from the roof to his motorcycle, trying to get as much space between him and the apartment as possible.

When he could trust his voice, he called Wolf.

"Target eliminated."

He had succeeded. He should have felt satisfaction. But he didn't. Inside his mind, there was the church, the falling snow. The voice that he couldn't hear. The memory of pain.

* * *

**Hi everyone! It's Thanksgiving weekend in the US, and I am thankful for all of you. :-)**

**If you celebrate Thanksgiving, I hope you had a good one. If you don't, I wish you good food and friendship. **


	9. Chapter 9

Chapter 9 – Stevie

January 10, 2014, 5 a.m.

* * *

Stevie had insisted in riding in the ambulance. Despite the crying infant - and the extreme irregularity of the situation - the EMT's didn't say no. Maybe it was because she still had her shield, or maybe it was just because of the look on her face. The EMT's worked furiously all the way through the drive, into the hospital. Fury didn't open his eyes once. They finally stopped her when they took him into the operating room, but they did let her stand outside. She watched through a window with Hill and Natasha, who had appeared suddenly at the hospital although no one seemed to have notified her.

"Is he going to make it?" Natasha asked, voice choked.

"I don't know."

Stevie sat in an uncomfortable hospital chair, shield propped against one side, diaper bag against the other. She had finally gotten Maggie back to sleep, wrapped in her favorite blanket – pink and soft.

"Tell me about the shooter." Natasha didn't take her eyes off Fury as she spoke.

"I didn't see much of him. He's good."

That shot – through a window and a set of blinds - Stevie knew enough about sniping to know how hard that was. She closed her eyes, pulling up her memory of the glimpse she'd had of him.

"His left arm...It was armored."

"Armored?"

"Metallic."

Natasha's mouth opened silently. Closed. Was it fear? Surprise? She turned to Hill, who stood at the window, biting her lip.

"Ballistics?" Natasha asked.

"Three slugs," Hill replied. "Soviet made. I doubt we'll be able to trace them – this is a professional."

Stevie remembered at that moment that Natasha herself was a Soviet assassin. Extremely well-trained.

_Three slugs. Only one shot through the window. Fury was shot twice on the way. The assassin followed him to my apartment. _Stevie looked at the baby in her arms. She was sucking her thumb, damp tracks of tears still on her cheeks. _Damn you, Fury_.

She felt guilty as soon as she thought it.

Something was happening on the other side of the glass. Machines were beeping, surgeons calling out curt, urgent instructions. Stevie stood carefully, tucking the blanket around Maggie as she came closer to the glass.

"Don't do this to me, Nick," Natasha murmured, so softly that Stevie didn't think anyone else could have heard her. The other woman looked...stricken.

Fury's body jolted as the doctors shocked his heart – once, twice. Natasha and Hill both flinched.

There was a pause. Hill put her hands to her mouth. Natasha swallowed heavily. One second. Two. The doctors were staring at the clock, at their instruments, displays of lines and blinking lights. And then, it was like the room exhaled. The doctors bowed their heads. Slowly, they began to put the instruments away, roll the machines back to their corners. There was no need to hurry now. Natasha made a strangled sound. Hill tuned abruptly and left the room.

Stevie rocked her daughter. Kissed her forehead. And used the movement to hide the USB drive as she tucked it inside her shirt.

They let her see the body. Lying there on the table, bereft of all his force of personality, Fury looked old, and small. Stevie didn't know how to feel. She'd worked with the man. She'd joked with him, fought with him.

_He lied to me._

Natasha stood by Fury's head, arms folded, jaw clenched, as if she was about to give the man a stern lecture.

For all the time they'd spent together, Stevie knew very little about Agent Romanoff's life. She had done something terrible, back when she worked for the Soviets. Something she wanted to atone for. What had Fury been to her? A father? A savior? Or was this all just another act?

Agent Hill opened the door behind them softly. "They need to take him," she said unsteadily.

Natasha nodded. She put her hand on Fury's forehead briefly and left the room. Stevie followed her. There was no reason for her to stay. As soon as they were in the hall, Natasha whirled on her.

"Why was Fury in your apartment?" she asked, voice low but intense.

"I don't know." Stevie said. Maggie half woke with a cry, and Stevie bounced her in her arms, hoping the interruption would make her lie less obvious. Natasha arched one eyebrow skeptically.

"Cap." Someone said behind her. She almost jumped before realizing it was Rumlow. "They want you back at HQ."

"Can I have a second?" She remembered the message on Fury's phone. SHIELD COMPROMISED.

"They want you now." He said with an apologetic smile.

"Alright."

The drive jabbed her in the ribs whenever she breathed. She needed to get it to Tony. She needed to get Maggie to Tony. Rumlow walked to the door, where a STRIKE team waited to escort her to Pierce. _No way out._

Natasha had read her as easily as ever. She took a step closer, spoke in a low voice.

"Do you want to leave Maggie with me?"

Two days ago, Stevie would have considered it.

"No," she said. "It's fine."

Natasha smiled - more crookedly than usual.

"You're a terrible liar," she hissed.

Stevie took a breath, let it out. _Come on, Rogers. What's the plan? _Natasha was stalking off, back stiff with anger. Rumlow waited for her, one eyebrow raised. Maggie sighed deeply in her sleep. In front of her, a man opened up the vending machine, began stocking it with candy bars and bags of chips. Stevie's stomach growled. She'd been up all night without eating. _There it is._

"Excuse me," Stevie asked with a smile. "Can I ask you for a favor?"

When she caught up with Rumlow, she was awkwardly unwrapping a granola bar with one hand. And the USB drive was gone.

* * *

**The cloak and dagger stuff begins...Stevie isn't a natural spy like Natasha, so we'll have to see how she manages!**


	10. Chapter 10

Chapter 10 – Pietro

January 10, 2014 – 5 a.m.

* * *

She was humming again.

The melody had slipped into Pietro's dreams as he sprawled shirtless on the too-soft hotel bed. He woke up with a stiff neck and a lingering feeling of melancholy. It had been their mother's favorite song, the one she sang to them before turning out the light. Wanda only hummed it when she was afraid.

Pietro stood up, tried to crack his neck. He hadn't even showered before falling into bed, and his skin itched. God, he hated this job already. A draft caught him suddenly and he shivered. The door to the balcony was open. Wanda was sitting with her back to him, looking out at a small, circular park, its trees bare and gray around an empty stone fountain. His mind overlayed another image – bodies in the street, a high-rise burning. He knew she was remembering it, too.

Pietro had lifted a deck of cards from the airport gift shop. It was still in his trouser pocket. He pulled out a card and held it to his forehead theatrically, standing behind Wanda.

"What card am I -"

"Two of hearts," she said without looking at him. She sat with her legs curled up beneath her, a cup of hotel coffee in her hands.

Pietro threw the card over his shoulder and pulled out another one.

"King of clubs." She turned to face him. "Are you trying to close your mind?"

Pietro rolled his eyes. This time, he threw the whole deck over his shoulder in a colorful spray of paper. There was a blur and he was back at Wanda's side. He fanned the deck to show her all the cards were in perfect order before setting it on the other chair.

"Showoff," she said, smile almost hidden behind her hair.

"I was trying," Pietro said. His sister's smile vanished.

"Well, you have to try harder," Wanda said. "Or she'll get to you. She's getting to you already."

"She isn't," Pietro said. Wanda snorted. "She isn't!"

He crouched beside his sister.

"You're _family_. No power on earth can come between us."

"I'm not sure her power is from Earth," Wanda murmured.

Pietro shivered, remembering the monolith's eerie glow on the green ice, the way it stole his attention without him noticing.

As usual, when their conversations skated the edge of something serious, they suddenly and mutually changed the subject. Wanda looked at him as if she had just noticed his state of partial undress and clucked over him, herding him inside and shutting the balcony door. Pietro flopped on the couch, long legs draped over one armrest, his hands a blur as he shuffled the deck of cards into different configurations.

"I'm so bored," he complained, as Wanda poured the dregs from the tiny coffemaker into her cup. "What's on?"

He turned on the TV and "Let It Go" blasted the room at full volume. Wanda seized the remote and shut it off, tossing it across the room when he tried to take it back.

"Come on, sis!" He groaned, nobly refraining from blurring across the room to get the remote again. "It's not like we have anything better to do."

He clenched his teeth at the memory of the previous day's meeting - how Pierce had dismissed them like children while that other man leered at his sister.

_When it's time, _Pietro thought. _When it's time I'll take care of that one myself._

Wanda put her hand on his arm.

"I don't like it either," she said. "Pierce's mind is like a nest of snakes, cold things slithering over each other. But sitting idle, doing nothing..."

"It makes it all worse."

They were working for the Mandarin to help Grandfather and working for Pierce to help the Mandarin and despite it all, here they were, sitting on their hands so they wouldn't sabotage anything. Of course Pierce was too smart to trust them with something important – the Mandarin was, too. That's why they were here.

"If you wanted to do something," Pietro said, "who could stop you? You could just waltz in and take whatever you wanted."

Wanda shook her head. "Not alone. Not without leaving a trail."

But she was chewing on her thumbnail, and that meant she was considering it.

"We need something for ourselves," she said at last.

"A weapon?"

"Information." She smiled, and Pietro knew SHIELD and Pierce didn't stand a chance. "Put on a shirt."

* * *

**Here they are again - my favorite twins. **

**If you're thinking - "Hey, Thirdcow - isn't the Mandarin just some boring white dude that Pepper killed in Iron Man 3? What the hell is the Monolith? Who's Grandfather?" - you should follow my advice and read "Things Time Cannot Mend" which is set before this story and gives a little background on that. **


	11. Chapter 11

Chapter 11 - Stevie

January 10, 2014, 5:30 a.m.

* * *

Fury's office couldn't have been more different from the last time Stevie had seen it, less than twenty-four hours ago. The drawers were all thrown open, papers piled on the desk. Pierce stood at the windows, looking out. In the pre-dawn darkness, the river reflected the city lights like a black mirror. An aide closed the door behind Stevie, and Pierce turned at the sound, frown turning into a weary smile. He crossed the room to shake her hand.

"Ah, Captain. Good to see you again. How's your daughter?"

"She's downstairs. Sleeping, thank God."

Stevie had dropped Maggie off at daycare. The girl had been so exhausted that she didn't do more than sigh and turn over when Stevie put her down in one of the cribs. SHIELD employees worked around the clock, and as Stevie was leaving some parents she knew were already coming in with their own children. She managed to smile at their greetings, to reply with distracted pleasantries. She had time to put on her uniform, re-braid her hair, and splash some water on her face. And then it was time to talk to Alexander Pierce, Undersecretary of the World Security Council, Nick Fury's boss.

He ushered her to the couch at the side of room.

"Please, take a seat," he said. "I took the liberty of ordering coffee for you. Black okay?"

"As long as it's strong."

Stevie unholstered her shield and propped it against the sofa. She took a cautious sip and put the cup down. Pierce took his jacket off and threw it over the back of an armchair before sitting himself. Except for the expensive suit, he looked like the sheriff from a Western film. Weathered face, square-jawed and honest. Sandy hair going gray at the temples. Straight-backed and lean.

"How old is she now...Maggie is it?"

"That's right," Stevie said. "About eighteen months."

She took another sip, wetting her lips but not swallowing. Pierce chuckled.

"At that age, my oldest fell off the back of a rocking chair. Cut her tongue open. As soon as we got back from the doctor's she was running around like nothing had happened."

Stevie looked at him blankly.

"What I'm saying, Captain, is that she'll be fine."

"Thank you, sir."

He sat back in the armchair. "Did I ever tell you my father served in the 101st?"

"No, sir."

The first, last and only time they'd met was at Maggie's first birthday, which had been arranged by Tony Stark. At least fifty people had attended. They'd barely said hello.

"Consider this a belated 'thank you' on his behalf."

"You're welcome, sir." _When will he get to the point? _

Pierce handed her a photograph. Stevie expected a grainy shot of the mysterious shooter on the roof, but it was a glossy print of a young dark-skinned man, obviously Fury despite the lack of eyepatch. He faced an equally young Alexander Pierce, right hand raised. Pierce began to speak, standing and pacing as he did so.

"That photo was taken five years after Nick and I met, when I was at the State Department in Bogota. ELN rebels took the embassy. Security got me out, but the rebels took hostages."

He spoke with the cadence of a storyteller, laying out the events, building suspense.

"Nick was deputy chief of the SHIELD station there. He comes to me with a plan. Wants to storm the building through the sewers. I said no. We negotiate. Turns out the ELN doesn't negotiate so they pull out a kill order. They storm the basement and what do they find?"

He smiled.

"They find it empty. Nick had ignored my direct order and carried out an unauthorized military operation. He saved the lives of a dozen military officers, including _my_ daughter."

"So you gave him a promotion." Stevie put the photo back on the table.

"I've never had any cause to regret it."

Pierce stopped. Leaned against Fury's desk. His demeanor changed subtly but completely. No smile this time.

"Captain. Why was Nick in your apartment last night?"

The same question Natasha had asked. _Hopefully, I've become a better liar with practice_. Stevie looked away.

"I don't know," she said. It wasn't technically a lie. Why had Fury come to her with the dive - when he had as good as threatened her the previous day?

"Did you know your apartment was bugged?"

Stevie remembered the message on Fury's phone - _EARS EVERYWHERE._

"Fury told me."

"Did he tell you he was the one who bugged it?"

Stevie did her best to keep her face expressionless. She had that feeling again, that she had when she looked down at the Insight carrier. Walking out onto rotten ice. Never knowing when it would give way.

"I want to show you something," Pierce said.

He pushed a button on a little remote, and a large screen behind the couch came to life. Stevie had to crane her neck to see it, but there on the screen was George Batroc, large as life, handcuffed to a chair in a featureless interrogation room.

This time her surprise must have shown. Pierce spoke.

"Yeah, they picked him up last night in a not-so-safe-house."

"Are you saying he's a suspect? Assassination isn't in Batroc's line."

And the figure she had seen on the roof definitely wasn't Batroc. Even without considering the metal arm. He just..._moved_ differently.

"It's more complicated than that," Pierce said. He half turned to rummage through the files on Fury's desk. "Batroc was hired anonymously to attack the _Lemurian_ _Star_. He was contacted by email and paid by wire transfer. And then the money was run through..."

He found the file he had been looking for and flipped a few pages.

"Seventeen fictitious accounts. The last going to a holding company that was registered to a Jacob Beech."

He handed the file over to her. Stevie looked down at it, but it might as well have been in another language.

"Am I supposed to know who that is?"

"Not likely. Beech died six years ago. His last address was 1435 Elmhurst Drive. When I first met Nick his mother lived at 1437."

Stevie raised an eyebrow. "Are you saying Fury hired the pirates? Why?"

"The prevailing theory," Pierce said, "is that the hijacking was a cover for the acquisition and sale of classified intelligence."

Stevie remembered Natasha's smirk, lit up by the blue of the computer screen.

"The sale went sour and that led to Nick's death," he continued.

It all added up...except it didn't. Where did Insight fit into this story? Fury had revealed it to her, and been killed within less than a day. Fury was no angel – but Stevie couldn't believe he would sell information. Using Batroc to get something from the _Lemurian_ _Star_ though...something he couldn't go after openly...Pierce was looking at her, face unreadable. She dropped the file onto the table.

"If you really knew Nick Fury," she said. "You'd know that wasn't true."

Pierce smiled.

"Why do you think we're talking?"

He paced back to the windows. A freezing rain had begun, covering them in a layer of fine mist. He put his hands in his impeccably tailored trouser pockets.

"See, I took a seat on the Council, not because I wanted to, but because Nick asked me to. Because we were both realists. We knew that despite all the diplomacy and the hand-shaking and the rhetoric, that to build a really better world sometimes means having to tear the old one down."

Stevie had heard that before. _War is the world's only hygiene. _A rallying cry for fascism, years before anyone took it seriously enough. Her hands tingled and she balled them into fists. Pierce turned from the window. His face had changed again. Now his expression was grim.

"And that makes enemies. Those people that call you dirty because you've got the guts to stick your hands in the mud to build something better. And the idea that those people could be happy today? Makes me really, really angry."

He walked toward her as he talked, and she stood to meet him. He fixed her eyes with his. When he spoke, his voice was low, entreating.

"Captain, you were the last one to see Nick alive. I don't think that's an accident. And I don't think you do, either. So I'm going to ask again. Why was he there?"

Stevie looked into his eyes, and for a moment, she considered telling him about the drive. Considered letting this all become someone else's problem. But she could feel the tension in the air, like a storm. Nothing about the story added up. Something terrible was about to happen.

"Fury told me not to trust anyone."

Pierce smiled again. How easily he could make his face do what he wanted it to, Stevie thought. What a great actor he would have made.

"I wonder," Pierce said, "if that included him."

"I'm sorry," Stevie said, trying her best to imitate how Natasha had sounded, her voice choked with sorrow. "Those were his last words."

She turned from him, picked up her shield and holstered it behind her.

"If you'll excuse me, my daughter and I have both had a trying night."

When she turned back, she saw Pierce's face. For an instant there was a look of rage. Then the moment passed. He was the kindly sheriff again.

"I understand," he said. "Please call me if anything comes to mind."

As she walked out of the office, her skin crawled as if she was in the sights of a gun.

* * *

**Here Stevie makes an important decision - not to trust Pierce. Of course, you all know what the repercussions will be! Thank you for reading, and I hope you enjoy.**


	12. Chapter 12

Chapter 12 - Stevie

January 10, 2014, 5:45 a.m.

* * *

Stevie almost ran down to the daycare center, heart racing the entire time. She burst through the door to the center's small lobby, where children would be signed in and out, and almost sagged with relief. Through the glass door, she could see the children all sitting in the story corner; hear a muffled, electronic song. She turned to the desk to tell the attendant she needed to take Maggie, but there was no one there.

_That's odd._ Stevie turned back slowly. The person in the storyteller's chair was wearing the black uniform of a STRIKE agent. His back was to her, but she could see that he was holding a child in his lap. She could see the child's hair – curly and brown. Her stomach clenched. Now that she was paying attention, she could hear the song. It was "Let it Go."

Stevie opened the door and walked into the center, slowly, like someone walking through water. She had always found it so charming – child-size furniture, dress-up trunk, toy food made out of wood. Now, the air itself seemed full of menace, every book and chair threatening. In the story corner, the staff sat with children on their laps, frightened eyes darting to her as she entered. One woman was silently crying. Stevie knew she should try to look brave for them - it was her job – but she felt like her veins were full of ice.

There was Rumlow, where she knew he would be - sitting on the red ottoman they used for storytelling, Maggie on his lap with the Elsa doll. Maggie laughed as she banged the doll against Rumlow's knee. He held a gun loosely in one hand, barrel pointed at the floor. The other children were beginning to pick up the fear of their caregivers, squirming and fussing.

Stevie stopped in front of the man.

"Brock."

"Captain," he smiled his crooked smile. It was exactly the same smile he'd given her a dozen times. A hundred times. How could she have seen him so often and not known that he would do this?

"What are you doing?"

The gun was the biggest thing in the universe. It kept dragging Stevie's eyes away from Rumlow's face.

"You need to come with me, boss," he said. "The chief wants to see you."

"We just spoke."

She had to get him away from the children, get Maggie away from him. How? She couldn't stop looking at the gun.

"Yeah, well." He shrugged lazily. "He wasn't too happy with your last conversation. There's no need to make a scene, right? No need for anyone to get hurt."

The gun twitched a little, and all the adults in the room flinched. Stevie's mind pushed through panic, into icy clarity. She couldn't go with Rumlow. She'd never get out alive. She had to take him out without him shooting anyone. She'd only have one chance.

Stevie allowed her fear to show. It wasn't difficult.

"Alright," she said. "Alright, I'll come with you, just please don't hurt anyone."

Rumlow began to stand.

"There, that wasn't so hard -"

He didn't finish the word. As he stood up, he had to balance Maggie in one arm. That wasn't easy to do. He lost focus for a second. That was all it took.

Stevie struck like a viper. She grabbed his gun hand and squeezed. He barely had time to cry out as the bones crunched. Reflexively, he let go of Maggie, and as the child fell, Stevie punched him in the throat, seized the back of his head, and slammed his face into the arts and crafts table so hard the wood split in two. She staggered backward, taking great, shuddering gulps of air as if she had been half-drowned. Rumlow's face was covered in blood.

Her hearing came back all at once. An alarm blaring, the workers screaming. Children crying.

_Maggie!_

Stevie ran to the girl, picked her up. She was howling, but there was no time to soothe her. The workers were frozen in panic.

"Run!" She barked at them. "Now!"

She fled into the lobby. The alarm was even louder here – the lockdown alarm, used for attacks on the Triskelion itself. SHIELD workers were well-trained. No panic, no confusion. They were proceeding briskly to their stations...and a STRIKE team was coming across the foyer.

Stevie turned and jogged briskly as she considered her options, hoping to blend in with the crowd at least for a few moments. The only entrance by land was the bridge, but that would never work. It was too easy to close off. Thanks to the lockdown alarm, it was being closed off automatically.

_By land won't work...maybe by air? _

She thought of something she'd read – foxes laying down false trails, doubling back on themselves to lead hunters astray. She heard someone call out from across the foyer, and she started to run, unholstering her shield.

* * *

Pierce had barely walked into the command center when he got the bad news.

"Rumlow failed." One of the analysts greeted him when he entered. "Rogers is still in play."

He nodded matter-of-factly. Fix the problem first. He could fix the blame later.

"Where is she?" Another analyst pulled up camera feeds on the room's oversized monitors, four to a screen. "It can't be too hard to find a woman with a star on her chest."

"There!"

The agent said it as soon as Pierce himself had seen it – one square turning black. Another. Pierce caught a glimpse of the shield for just a second before the third one went dark. She was smashing the cameras as she ran. Interesting...

"Call up the building map. I want to see where she's going."

More cameras blacked out. One monitor had become a wireframe diagram of the ground floor, the destroyed cameras marked in yellow. There it was. Her destination. The fire stairs, where there were no cameras.

"Send teams to that stairwell. Do we have anyone on the roof?"

"Negative."

"Well, get them there. I want a team every ten floors. Keep her from getting out."

There was nowhere for her to go, certainly not carrying a baby. _What are you planning, Captain Rogers?_

* * *

Stevie had made a point of memorizing the building layout of the Triskelion, relying on her serum-granted photographic memory to help her. If you were under attack, the best defense was to know the terrain better than your enemy did. Around the corner from the fire stairs was the service elevator, disabled automatically along with all the other elevators in the building thanks to the lockdown alarm.

She set Maggie down in the corridor so she could use both hands to pry the elevator door open, then snatched the girl up before she could toddle away down the hall.

_How am I going to do this? _

She fashioned her jacket into a rough sling, tying Maggie to her chest. It wasn't pretty, but it let her balance on the handrails while she punched through the roof of the elevator with her shield. She pulled herself through as quickly as she could, protecting Maggie's head from the ragged edges of the hole with her arm. A few blows from the shield snapped the cable, and the elevator jerked before the emergency breaks engaged.

Stevie looked up…and up. Fifty floors. This was not going to be easy. She looked down at Maggie's face, adjusting the makeshift sling as much as she could. The baby squirmed and pointed up.

"Da?"

"Da," Stevie replied, holstering her shield at her back.

* * *

"Floor 10 clear. Floor 25 clear. No one on the stairs so far."

"Why not let me help, Mr. Secretary?" The boy, of course. He and his sister had been waiting in the control room with the agents, he pacing in constant, restless motion, occasionally blurring from one edge of the room to the other in a burst of uncontrolled speed. "I could sweep the whole building in minutes."

"Mr. Maximoff, do you play cards?"

"I've played a little _s__edma_..." He said with a smirk. Ah, the arrogance of youth. Soon enough, it would be wiped away. Enough pain would do that to a man.

"You are a trump card I am unwilling to reveal at present." He turned to the girl. She sat on the edge of a chair, picking at her black nail polish. "What about you, Ms. Maximoff? Not going to offer to help? What is it you do again?"

"I have to be close to her to sense her mind," she said, not looking at him. "I can't tell where she is going any more than you can."

"In that case, I suppose you're stuck in here with me." Of course, that was the plan of the twins' shadowy master. Keep them close to watch him, to make sure the alliance held. To gather intelligence and report back, he had no doubt. Well, the Mandarin would see how well Pierce could play the game.

"There!" One of the agents called out.

The doors of the service elevator opened with a jerk, and Rogers forced her way through. She was carrying something, a bundle on her chest – the baby. Pierce whistled, impressed in spite of himself. She'd climbed fifty floors before his men could run them, all while holding an infant. _Not too shabby._ He felt sorry that he would have to kill her. What an asset she would make.

She threw her shield, and Pierce's view of her dissolved into static.

* * *

Stevie almost fumbled her shield when it bounced back to her, arms burning and trembling form her climb up the elevator shaft. She had pulled herself up the cable hand over hand, singing "Frere Jacques" in rhythm with her climbing to keep Maggie happy. She kept looking into her daughter's green eyes, smiling and making faces and praying that the girl wouldn't fling herself suddenly to one side. The jury-rigged sling was not what Stevie would have chosen for a fifty-story climb with a toddler.

She shook out her hands. She had managed to get to the roof before the STRIKE team at least, but she probably had only moments to spare. She breathed a sigh of relief when she saw a quinjet sitting on one of the landing pads. She ran to it, pressed her thumb to the lock and gave her authorization code.

_Thank goodness I've learned a thing or two since I woke up._

* * *

There was only one reason for Rogers to be on the roof. She couldn't escape on the bridge, so she was trying to escape by air. A clever little misdirection, with the staircase, but it wouldn't work.

"All teams cease pursuit," he ordered. "We need fighters in the air, now. Tell them to fire on all other aircraft leaving the Triskleion."

"But..." It was the girl.

"Yes? You have an objection?"

She turned her face away, hair hiding her expression. Her brother put a hand on her shoulder. _Ah. The baby._ Who would have thought an agent of the Mandarin would be so squeamish?

"Who's in the air?" He asked.

"Bravo."

"Tell me something, Bravo."

"One jet, sir. Shot it down just North of Kent Island."

"Thank you, Bravo," Pierce said. "Alpha, send a recovery team to Kent Island. I want this confirmed. Tango, we need some quick PR work. The usual training exercise yarn should do it."

"Yes, sir."

"And now," Pierce turned to the twins. The girl was still hiding behind her hair. "I have a job for you. If you still want to help, that is."

The brother nodded, jaw clenched as if he was trying to keep his words in check by force.

"Find me the Black Widow." He smiled to himself as he left the command center. That should keep the kids out of his hair.

He had a feeling the recovery team wouldn't find anything. Rogers had been clever – much more than he'd expected. Surely she would have anticipated the counterstrike.

He'd have to keep the Soldier awake after all. Pierce almost laughed at the thought. Yes. He'd be perfect for this assignment.

* * *

**An action packed chapter for you! **

**The dramatic escape of male Steve obviously would not work so well with a toddler in tow, so I tried to emphasize Stevie's cunning and strategic ability. **

**The disarm Stevie uses against Rumlow is a Krav Maga technique. I've been looking up a lot of MMA videos and martial arts on YouTube, LoL.**

**I also used this chapter to get into Pierce's head a bit. Please let me know if the POV swapping was difficult.**

**Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Joyous Kwanzaa and a good Winter Solstice to you all.**


	13. Chapter 13

Chapter 13 - Stevie

January 10, 2014, 6:30 a.m.

* * *

Stevie's hands were a mass of pain – she didn't want to look at them. After she had set the autopilot of the quinjet, she had known that she wouldn't have much time before they figured out no one was on board. Too bad she hadn't brought her gloves. At least, thanks to the super soldier serum, she knew the damage would heal. After sliding down the elevator cable, she fled down the fire stairs, to the loading bay, hoping to find a delivery truck. What she would do after that was a little nebulous.

Fortunately, there was one, and only one - white, with "Sterling Laundry" on the side in black lettering. She crept closer to it, trying to get a look at the driver. His hair was silvery gray, the sides of his head shaved, the top gelled up into little spikes. He had a neatly trimmed beard. He paced beside the truck, talking on his cell phone. His accent...Russian?

"Yeah, there's some kind of lockdown or something...That's the point. I don't know. That's why I'm calling you...No, do we? I….what do want me to do, break out of SHIELD? I'll be there when I can." He put the phone in one pocket of his padded jacket and pulled a cigarette out of the other. Stevie could see the barest bit of a tattoo poking out over his collar. "Asshole," he muttered as he tried to get his lighter to strike. Stevie was sure she could take him down if needed, even in her current state. Although, Maggie, still tied to her chest with her jacket, may get hurt.

_Let's appeal to his better nature._

She walked around the back of the truck. The man looked up and both cigarette and lighter fell to the concrete floor.

"Holy shit! Are you okay? Is that a baby?"

She looked down. The blood from her hands had soaked through the jacket wrapping Maggie. The baby turned her head, trying to get a look at the stranger.

"I need to get out of here," Stevie said. "Help me, please."

The man looked at her for a moment, wide-eyed. His eyes were as silver as his hair, and unsettling combination. He looked around him, and then Stevie could see him steeling himself. His posture became straighter, his movements practiced. He opened the back of the truck.

"Come on," he said. He offered her his hand, but she hopped up into the bed of the truck without it. The back of the truck was filled with huge blue plastic tubs covered in neatly fitting black rubberized canvas. He pulled back a few of the canvas covers and rummaged around, questioning Stevie as he did so.

"Have you been shot? Is the baby alright?"

"She's fine. It's just my hands." They were trembling involuntarily. They felt like they were on fire, every beat of her heart made them throb with pain. She held them in front of herself, half curled, like injured animals. "I had to rappel down an elevator cable with no gloves."

He looked up at her, eyebrow raised.

"...Wait a second."

He hopped down from the bed of the truck and returned a few moments later with a plastic water bottle.

"Alright. Hey, sweetie," he addressed Maggie, jingling his key ring in front of her. A little bobble-headed doll hung at the end. "What's this? Huh? What is it? You want it?"

Maggie seized the keys in one chubby fist and shook them so vigorously that Stevie had to pull her head back for fear of losing an eye. Meanwhile, the driver guided Stevie's hands over a tub full of black STRIKE uniforms and started to rinse them with his water bottle. It felt like she was squeezing a double handfull of broken glass. She hissed and bit back a cry of pain so as not to scare the baby.

"Motherfucker," said the man. "Sorry."

"No problem," Stevie ground out through clenched teeth.

He had already pulled a white lab coat from another tub, and was cutting it into strips with a pocketknife.

"Sorry this isn't the clean laundry," he said wryly.

"Regular germs aren't strong enough to get to me."

"It's been a while since I've had to do this."

He deftly wrapped each hand from wrist to fingertips, tying off the ends snugly. A three-tone signal rang over the PA system, announcing the all clear.

"That's our cue," Stevie said. The driver nodded.

"If you don't mind." He pointed to one of the tubs, full of rumpled towels. "Nothing too bad in here, I promise." He shifted a pile aside and she climbed in awkwardly. Maggie had put the key ring in her mouth and was chewing them with an expression of deep concentration.

"I'm going to need those back, sweetie," the driver said. He gently extracted them from Maggie's grip and dried them on his pants. Stevie shuffled herself down into the tub, among the linens, long legs folded up.

"I'm going to cover you up, okay? This is the last stop before I go back to base. Should only take twenty, thirty minutes."

"Alright," Stevie said. "Wait. Hold on."

She unholstered her shield and wedged it about halfway down the tub, making a tent of sorts over herself and Maggie. The baby hated having anything over her face. "Go ahead."

The driver knocked twice on the shield, then Stevie heard the muffled "whump" of towels being replaced on top of it, the sound of the canvas cover being pulled back over the top of the tub. The door closed, and there was total darkness.

At first, Stevie expected a STRIKE team to burst in every time the truck stopped for any reason – but as time passed, she supposed her trick with the plane had worked. At least, for the moment. The tone of the wheels changed underneath her as they shifted from the concrete of Theodore Roosevelt Bridge to the asphalt of...whatever road they were taking. Maggie had squirmed and peeped against her chest, but the darkness and the wheels had a soporific effect, and now she was still, breathing deep and regular on Stevie's cheek. The towels around her smelled not unpleasantly of soap. Although the tub wall dug painfully into Stevie's back, and her hands felt swollen to the size of baseball gloves, she started to drift off herself. The sound of the door opening brought her awake with a start.

"It's only me."

The driver's voice, and the tromps of his heavy boots as he rapidly crossed to the tub here she was hidden. Stevie stood up, pushing the mass of towels off herself, like a bear shaking off snow. Maggie blinked and screwed up her face at the sudden brightness.

"How are the hands?" He asked.

She looked at the stiff, bandaged masses at the ends of her wrists. The bleeding had already stopped. Even the throbbing was better, if she wasn't imagining it.

"Better, I think." She tried an experimental flex, but stopped at a knife-like pain that shot all the way up her arms. "A little better."

"Hm. How fast do you heal?"

"I'm not sure." She'd recovered from a seventy-year deep freeze in under two weeks. "Pretty fast."

"Stretch them every now and then. Like this." He opened and closed his fists. "You don't want the new skin to grow in all tight."

Stevie regarded the man. His padded jacket, his jeans. Another tattoo emerged from his left sleeve and bled onto the back of his hand – an eight-pointed star.

"How do you know how to do...this?" She asked, holding up her bandaged hands.

He smiled wryly.

"I haven't always been a delivery boy."

The smile vanished. "Alright. You need something a little less...conspicuous. Hold on."

Again, he jumped down from the truck. Stevie crept to the edge of the door and looked out quickly, seeing a squat, blue building with a couple of other white trucks parked nearby. So he hadn't brought her to a police station or a SHIELD safehouse.

He came back with a gray stocking cap, a pair of gloves, a cup of vending machine coffee, and a set of blue padded coveralls stitched with the name "Bubba".

"Sorry. They didn't have a lot in your size."

She put Maggie back in the towel tub as she pulled on the coverall as best as she could without the use of ninety percent of her hands. It was baggy enough to fit over her lycra undershirt and her uniform trousers. Bubba was a big man, whoever he was. Her jacket-slash-sling was ruined, along with Maggie's pajamas, soaked red with blood.

"No problem," the driver said, and revealed a brown fleecy snowsuit for Maggie – complete with bear ears. Rather than try to take the stained clothes off a struggling toddler in the back of a truck, Stevie stuffed Maggie into the onesie clothes and all. The driver took the bloodstained jacket.

"I'll get rid of this," he said, as Stevie drank the coffee down in one long swallow, holding the cup between her wrists. He helped her pull the gloves on over her bandages, then produced a pack of half-squashed peanut butter crackers from his pocket.

"For the baby?" He said, making it a question.

At Stevie's nod, he opened the pack and handed one to Maggie. Stevie tucked the rest into her coveralls. It occurred to her that she had no money. Who knows when she'd be able to get food for Maggie again.

"Thank you," she said. "I cannot...cannot...thank you enough. What's your name?"

"Rovshan," he said. "But you can call me Robbie." He took a look outside the truck. "All clear."

"Time to go," Stevie said.

She climbed down carefully into the parking lot. The smell of detergent and dryer sheets wafted through the air. She could hear the sound of children playing, shrieks and laughter. There must be a school nearby. She pulled her cap down a little lower over her hair.

"Captain."

She turned. For all his surprising competence, Rovshan looked worried now. "What's happening?"

_I wish I knew._

"Something bad," she said. "Get out of town, if you can. You have friends here? Family?"

He nodded.

"Get them out, too."

She squared her shoulders, preparing to walk around into the frantic atmosphere of a school drop-off, already feeling like she stuck out like a sore thumb. After two steps, she turned back again. Rovshan was watching with an expression of worry.

"Sorry to ask but...do you know where I can stash my shield?"

* * *

**A wild OC emerges! Astute readers may have noticed that Rovshan is a former member of the Russian mafia - the hand tattoos are a sign of that. I went down the internet rabbit hole looking at Russian mafia tattoo symbolism, you guys. As always, thanks for reading. **


	14. Chapter 14

Chapter 14 - Stevie

January 10, 2014, 10 a.m.

* * *

Stevie walked to Georgetown University Hospital through a mist of freezing rain that prickled her face like tiny needles. Fog obscured everything more than a block away, making the brick apartments and parks strange and otherworldy. About halfway there, while extricating the last of Rovshan's peanut butter crackers for Maggie, Stevie discovered that the man had stuffed the pocket of her stolen jumpsuit with rumpled five-dollar bills. After the nightmarish flight from the Triskelion, that little kindness almost brought her to tears. She stopped by a grocery store to buy some diapers and a real-ish breakfast.

It was hard to be on the run with a baby – and without the use of her hands. Stevie barely managed a diaper change in the grocery store bathroom and had to open an applesauce pouch for Maggie with her teeth. But at least her hands no longer felt like they were on fire every time she stretched them. By the time she and Maggie came out of the store, the fog had burned away and the sun was shining, if a bit anemically.

Stevie had learned through experience that the best way to convince someone you belonged somewhere was to walk with confidence. She smiled vaguely at passing nurses and fielded some compliments about Maggie's bear suit, retracing her steps to the vending machine where she'd stowed Fury's flash drive behind five packs of Juicy Fruit.

The entire row was empty. Stevie felt her heart seize, her hands prickle painfully. Who had seen her put it there? She stared at her own wide-eyed reflection - and behind her, Natasha stepped into view, blowing a bubble. Wearing the same goddamned smirk she had in the computer room.

Stevie's incipient panic shifted instantly to anger. She took Natasha by the elbow and shoved her into an empty exam room, ignoring the sudden stab in her palm as she slammed the door behind them.

_I can't fight the Black Widow like this_. She'd have to try to scare her. _Again, hard to do when you're carrying a baby._

"Where is it?" Stevie asked in a soft yet furious voice, using her body to block the shorter woman from the door, holding Maggie at the hip facing away from Natasha in case the woman tried something.

"Safe. Where did you get it?" Natasha sounded just as soft, just as furious.

"Why would I tell you?"

Awareness dawned in Natasha's eyes. "Fury gave it to you. Why?"

_Because even Fury didn't trust you_. Natasha may have had the same thought, because, for a second she looked almost hurt.

"What's on it?" Stevie retorted.

"I don't know."

Stevie stepped toward the other woman and was surprised when she backed away, bumping into the wall behind her.

"Stop lying!" Stevie growled.

"I only act like I know everything, Rogers."

A cart rattled by outside. Both women turned to watch the door until the sound faded.

"You knew Fury hired the pirates, didn't you?" Stevie said, more quietly.

Natasha blinked. Surprised?

"That makes sense. The ship was dirty, Fury needed a way in so..." She seemed to realize that she was wandering from the point. She shook her head. "I know who killed Fury."

Her eyes were darting all over the place. The door, the windows, Stevie – as if she expected an attack from any side. Stevie had never seen her like this. She looked...cornered. Stevie stepped backward to give her some space.

"Most of the intelligence community don't believe he exists," Natasha said in a low voice. "Those that do call him the Winter Soldier. He's credited with over two dozen assassinations in the last fifty years."

Fifty years? He'd be a septuagenarian.

"Sounds like a ghost story," Stevie said.

"Five years ago I was escorting a nuclear engineer out of Iran," Natasha continued. "Somebody shot out my tires near Odessa. We lost control, went straight over a cliff. I pulled us out. But the Winter Soldier was there. I was covering my engineer, so he shot him...straight through me."

The other woman lifted her black shirt, revealing a shiny scar the size of a quarter above her left hip.

"Soviet slug. Untraceable." She smiled wryly. "Bye bye bikinis."

Stevie rolled her eyes. "Yeah, I'm sure you look just terrible in them now."

"Going after him's a dead end. I know. I've tried." She held up her right hand. In it was, suddenly, the flash drive. "Like you said, he's a ghost story."

Stevie took the drive. _A peace offering? _Could she trust the woman? "Let's find out what the ghost wants."

* * *

"The first rule of being on the run," Natasha said. "Don't run. Walk."

"Even I know that," Stevie replied.

Natasha was following her own advice, sauntering through the Gallery Place Mall as though there was nothing on her mind except some light window shopping. Stevie knew her nonchalance was only skin-deep – on the way here Natasha had led them on and off four different buses, going in totally different directions. Once she had even given the driver a very convincing sob story about her friend's "poor, sick baby" to get the bus driver to pull over and let them off between stops.

An ornate red and gold archway tipped the hat to mall's location in old Chinatown. Inside, the foyer was two stories tall, cream tilework and ivory columns leading up to a lacy arch of white and gold and glass. Even though it was Friday – and barely noon – the building was bustling with people.

"Shame that I missed the heyday of the mall," Stevie mused, as Natasha consulted the kiosk. "I wake up and they're already dying. Did they have malls in your part of the world?"

"They had one in Moscow," Natasha replied. "The State Universal Store. The lines would stretch across the Red Square." She smiled wryly. "Not that I got a lot of time for shopping in my misspent youth. Ah, there it is. The Apple Store."

Natasha pointed at a square among other squares on the blocky, backlit kiosk map.

"We can access the drive there. Completely anonymous."

They walked across the foyer, and Stevie lost herself for a second in the hum of their conversations all around her, refreshingly normal.

"Shit," Natasha whispered, breaking the illusion. "Second floor."

Stevie adjusted her cap and shifted Maggie on her hip to have an excuse to look up. Pacing around the second floor, definitely not following Natasha's advice about being nonchalant, were two STRIKE agents. They weren't wearing their black uniforms, but they were no less obvious – vigilant, beefy men in too-neat khakis and plaid shirts. Stevie could see the comms in their ears from where she was. She looked away, heart hammering.

"How did they follow us here?" She hissed urgently to the other woman.

"I don't know," Natasha whispered back. "Act casual. Maybe they haven't seen us."

Out of the corner of her eye, Stevie caught movement. One of the two men was saying something into his wristwatch. He signaled his companion and they both started to half-run to the escalator.

"I think they've seen us."

"Follow me."

Natasha immediately took a hard left to the movie theater, where an uninterested teenager stood behind the counter with a faraway look.

"How can I..."

"Two tickets for _Return to Nuke 'Em High_," Natasha interrupted, slapping a handful of bills on the counter. "The twelve-o-clock showing please."

"_Return to_ _Nuke 'em _High, coming right..." The boy cut himself off at the sight of Maggie in her bear suit. "Um. Coming right up."

Natasha snatched the tickets from his hand and tore them off herself.

"Keep the change!"

Natasha walked briskly past their assigned theater, opening the door of one that was completely empty. She proceeded to the staff door down by the screen.

"Locked of course." She pulled two small, flat pieces of metal out of her pocket and jimmied them in the lock. The door popped open, leading into the staff hallway. Natasha closed the door gently behind them. They ran through the halls, almost running into a short, gray-haired woman as they exited.

"Hey! You're not supposed to be back here!" She shouted after them, but it was already too late.

They emerged into a secluded hallway – unfreqented by customers, the back entrances to several stores lined up in a row.

"We have no idea how many agents there are, or where they are," Natasha said. She looked at the doors and chose one, pulling her lockpicks from her pocket again. "We need to change our look."

They didn't run into anybody in the staff rooms here, fortunately, and slipped into the store as naturally as if they had walked through the front door. The store was intentionally understated – earth tones, brushed concrete floor, a set of unpainted wood stairs leading to a second floor.

Even in her previous life, before the serum, Stevie had never been adept at shopping – or even liked it much – so she was happy to let Natasha take the lead. The smaller woman led her on a circuitous route around the store, handing her items seemingly at random. Stevie tried her best to balance Maggie and the growing pile of clothes.

A smiling girl walked over to them, and Natasha quickly intercepted her, bubbling over with happy chatter about her "girlfriend" that Stevie only realized referred to herself as she was walking into the fitting room. Natasha joined her a moment later.

"Sorry. Took me forever to get away."

She shut the door behind herself barely fast enough to stop Maggie from toddling out of the stall. Stevie had removed her gloves to more easily do up the buttons on a large men's flannel shirt. Natasha stared at her bandaged hands.

"Whoa, Karloff. What happened to you?"

"I understood that reference," Stevie said with a smile. "Escaping from the Triskelion was about as easy as you'd expect."

Natasha gave a low whistle. "Be mysterious. I'll get it out of you later."

She shed her own clothing with the fluidity of a quick-change artist, switching out her jeans and hoodie for tight black pants and a huge, patterned sweater. Stevie kept her navy fatigue pants and boots, but switched out her hat for a black baseball cap, and pulled on a rumpled looking green jacket over the red-checkered shirt. She checked the price tag out of curiosity.

"This costs _what ?!_" She sputtered. "It looks like it was made from a flour sack! I've seen _better_ clothes made from flour sacks!"

"Alright, grandma, keep your teeth in," Natasha said with a smile. "Anyway, it's not like we'll be paying for them."

It was easy to fall into old habits with Natasha – too easy to joke and banter. Stevie couldn't let herself forget. The server room. Fury bleeding. _Don't. Trust. Anyone. _Natasha was studying the plastic security tag on her sweater.

"We're in luck. These aren't ink tags. Just need some leverage..."

Stevie leaned over and squeezed the tag with both hands, wrenching it apart with a pop. She made short work of the others.

"And now, your turn _kiska_," Natasha said, turning to where Maggie was standing at the bench, banging a hanger against it with singleminded determination. "Too bad they don't have a children's department. Can we take off the bear suit?"

Stevie unzipped the front to reveal the bloodstains from this morning, dried and brown, but still extremely obvious.

"Okay," Natasha said slowly. "That's a no. We'll have to pull a _True Lies _on this outfit. Hold her still." As if by magic, she produced a pocketknife.

Stevie had swept Maggie into her arms before she knew what she was doing, clenching her hand into a fist so hard she felt a stab in her newly healing flesh. Natasha's face was a mask. Then she sighed.

"I'm not going to hold your daughter hostage in Urban Outfitters, Rogers," she said. "But if it makes you feel better, you can hand me the suit and hold onto the baby."

Natasha quickly cut the hood and sleeves off the bear suit, and Stevie stuffed a squirming Maggie back into it. At least it would look different at a glance.

"Time to go," Natasha said, tucking her red hair under Stevie's gray cap. "Front door, this time."

"And how are we going to get out while wearing hundreds of dollars in actual inventory?"

"You'd be amazed what people don't notice when you move with confidence."

* * *

They were close to getting out. STRIKE agents were not-so-discreetly watching the exits, but a group of German women had emerged from a clothing store and were heading down the stairs, laden with bags and chatting about where to eat. Stevie and Natasha let themselves be swept along in the group, hidden like zebras in a herd. They were going to get out, right under STRIKE's nose.

And then, Maggie exploded.

The girl had clearly had enough of being toted around across the city with no access to her toys, or her books, or her comfortable crib. She'd been squirming and fussing for a while, but now she howled and threw her body backwards so suddenly Stevie was afraid she'd lose her grip. A man on the first floor looked up immediately, hand to the wire in his ear. Stevie saw his eyes. She'd been made.

"Fuck," she breathed. Natasha looked shocked – then saw the agent herself.

"Oh, shit."

The women turned and tried to walk back into the store, but two more agents were converging on them. Herding them. _We have to put this fight on our terms. Now._

"Follow me," Stevie said. She squeezed Maggie tight, eliciting a piercing wail from the angry toddler, and leaped over the railing.

She landed in the middle of the food court, diners looking up in surprise. A moment later, Natasha landed behind her with a grunt. The STRIKE agent who'd been moving to block the base of the stairs was running to intercept, but Stevie didn't wait for him to arrive. She hooked a chair with her foot and kicked it directly at him, catching him the chest. Stevie fled through the maze of tables, vaulting any in her way, mall-goers scattering before her with screams or curses, Maggie howling into her ear.

_Did the jump hurt her? Can't worry about it now._

There was a Chinese restaurant directly ahead of her, white-hatted workers staring open-mouthed as Stevie barreled down upon them like a charging fullback, her howling baby in her arms.

"Out of the way!" She shouted. "Go!"

At the last minute, they did, scattering like pigeons in front of a bus.

Stevie jumped over the counter in one leap. Someone snatched at her jacket and she elbowed him in the face, feeling the bone crunch under the impact. She ran through the cramped front of house into the prep kitchen and kicked open the back door. Glancing behind her, she saw Natasha vault the counter with easy grace and fling a pan full of oil directly at an agent's eyes. As he howled, she turned the pan in her hand and smashed the gas line with it, tossed her lighter into the kitchen over her shoulder as she ran to Stevie. The gas ignited with a _whump_, and the back door slammed behind them over a red-orange burst of flame.

* * *

**Hi all! Sorry for the delay...I have intermittent bouts of depression, and some family issues have made it flare up again. Anyway - here's some fun spy stuff! Note: plaid is commonly worn by agents in civilian clothing. It's called "urban camouflage" and it's supposed to break up your outline and make it harder to draw a bead on you. Anyway - hope you enjoy and I'll try to keep the schedule moving in the future.**


	15. Chapter 15

Chapter 15 - Stevie

January 10, 2014, 1 p.m.

* * *

Natasha used the "sick baby" excuse with this bus driver as well – word for word, the same as the last time she had. Even her inflections were identical. This time, Maggie was working overtime to help out, red face screwed up in anger as Stevie ineffectually tried to soothe her.

"You sure you want to get out here?" The bus driver asked, looking out skeptically at the neighborhood around them, with its boarded windows and bums gathered in corners.

Natasha assured him that her sister lived close by. He shrugged and let them out.

They ducked down an alley. A pair of ragged looking people sat on a stoop, staring vaguely into the distance. Natasha walked up to them and held out two twenty dollar bills.

"Gentlemen," she said. They looked up at her with confusion and guarded interest. "We need your coats."

* * *

Stevie had found no bedbugs in the dingy motel room, despite her thorough search, but she still wasn't entirely convinced that the ancient crib the man had given her wouldn't give Maggie tetanus. Natasha had gone out for "supplies" over a half hour ago, and nothing Stevie had done had been able to soothe her daughter, who sobbed with a single-minded tenacity that would have impressed Stevie if it hadn't been so goddamn irritating.

"Shhhh, shhh...you're okay. You're okay," she murmured, patting the girl's back as she howled.

Stevie almost felt bad for the couple in the room next door. Then the half-heard voices turned into moans and rhythmic thumping and her sympathy evaporated.

"Oh, for crying out loud," she muttered, punching the buttons on the remote with unnecessary force as she bounced Maggie on one hip. A cartoon with a horse-headed man, a red-haired young woman pouting in a short skirt, unrealistically handsome doctors – also pouting. Finally, she stumbled across something in black and white. It was _The Count of Monte Cristo_ from...was it 1934? She'd made Bucky read the book after they watched it. He'd said it was okay, but "too damn long."

"_How many times can you describe a man getting whipped? I felt like I was in jail, reading it."_

"_That's the point!"_

Stevie turned up the volume to drown out the couple's activity. Maggie raised her own sobs accordingly.

Stevie felt something inside her snap. She threw the remote against the wall and held Maggie in front of her at arms' length.

"Can you just be quiet for one goddamn second? Please!?"

The girl quieted for a moment, little eyes wide in surprise. Stevie realized she'd been shouting, almost shaking her. She felt a wave of guilt crash over her like nausea. Stevie left her in the rickety crib and almost ran out the door, sliding down it and resting her head on her knees. Inside the room, Maggie's cries resumed, high and desperate.

"Hey."

Stevie opened her eyes. Between her own feet were the scuffed toes of Natasha's boots.

"Sounds rough in there."

Stevie closed her eyes again.

"I'm a monster," she muttered into her knees.

"I'm sorry, I didn't quite catch that." Natasha sat down next to her on the balcony. Stevie heard the dry-leaf rustle of plastic bags shifting, the hiss of a soda bottle opening. When she didn't look up, Natasha poked her hard in the shoulder.

"Ouch."

"Drink it."

Natasha handed her a bottle of Coke – tall and cold. Stevie downed it in one long swallow.

"Good, huh? Mexican. Real sugar – none of that high-fructose corn syrup BS."

The door next to theirs opened, and a woman emerged in a fluffy pink bathrobe with tousled hair.

"Hey," she said. "Could you shut that baby up? We're trying to have some rest and it's..."

The woman had obviously caught sight of Natasha's face, and her voice died to silence. A heavyset man emerged behind her, pushed his girlfriend aside.

"You bitches need to calm that brat down. I paid for this room and..."

Natasha smiled at him. He slammed the door and Stevie heard the bolt shoot home. _How does she do that? _Natasha was already pulling foil-wrapped packages out of her bags.

"Dollar Menu cuisine," she said. "Want the double bypass or the triple bypass? I got some chicken nuggets and Go-Gurt for Maggie if you think food would help."

Stevie was suddenly ravenous. She ate three fried chicken sandwiches, barely registering their contents.

"The downside of the supersoldier metabolism, huh?" Natasha said, as Stevie wiped ketchup from her chin with the back of her hand. Inside the hotel room, Maggie was finally silent. Only the sound of Robert Donat's voice came through the door.

* * *

While Maggie slept, Natasha dyed Stevie's hair brown.

"That Elsa braid is a dead giveaway."

"You're one to talk," Stevie said. "There aren't that many gorgeous redheads in DC."

"Flattery will get you nowhere," Natasha said. She took a pair of hair scissors from the counter. "Towel off. The color change isn't enough."

Stevie sat on a rough hotel towel at the edge of the bed, as Natasha cut her hair to right below her chin. It hadn't been that short since Kreichsburg, when a fireball had burned off her braid. Stevie closed her eyes and remembered Peggy cutting her hair, her deft hands, her soft voice. How Stevie missed her, the young Peggy, calm and capable and absolutely trustworthy. Now, if only to herself, Stevie could admit that she missed the war itself.

_Right and wrong,_ she thought. _So easy to decide. _

She wasn't cut out for this cloak-and-dagger stuff. But that didn't matter. Something terrible was about to happen, and she might be the only person who could stop it.

"So. Our next move." Stevie said, softly, so as not to wake Maggie. "We need to read the drive. Somewhere that it can't be traced."

"Mm-hmm," Natasha said, shaking out the towel into the bathtub. "But you know what our real next move is?"

"What?"

"Order us a pizza. I'm starving again." Natasha tossed her the room phone and Stevie fumbled to catch the headset as it slithered off.

"Ham and pineapple okay?" Stevie asked as Natasha started the water in the bathroom. She re-emerged with a towel wrapped around her neck and pointed her scissors at Stevie threateningly.

"Don't. You. Dare."

* * *

**Hi everyone! Some chapter notes - every new parent has had that moment where they snap at a crying baby and then feel terrible. I certainly have! Frankly, I'm surprised it took Stevie this long.**

**As for ham and pineapple - your own preferences aside - Stevie comes to us out of the Great Depression, which produced some truly bizarre foods. Can I interest you in peanut butter stuffed onions? Bologna casserole? Vinegar pie? Modern food is all just an extravagant celebration for her. :-)**


	16. Chapter 16

Chapter 16 – The Soldier

* * *

After delivering his mission report, the Soldier waited in the same nondescript, gray room he'd woken up in however many hours earlier. Soon, he would be fed his carefully balanced nutrient blend, allowed 20 minutes in a shower, and then put back under for when they needed him again. He had trouble remembering his past missions, although he knew there had been many. But he thought that he should have felt something. Satisfaction. Not this. He kept thinking about the woman in the apartment, the blonde braid. It made him uneasy. He had practically snarled at the tech checking his arm and the man had nearly jumped out of his skin. He had completed the mission. Why was he still here?

The reason walked through the door – Pierce and the Wolf, already in mid conversation.

"I thought the kids were after her," the Wolf said, words slurring through swollen lips.

"Ha. Useless. A few sightings. Although they did confirm for me that the Captain is still alive. Hill?"

"Hill's gone."

"So many disappearing women, Brock. It's a bit...frustrating."

The Wolf looked horrible, like someone had worked over his face with a steel bat. The sight of him made the Soldier smile.

"What are you smirking at, Ice Man?" The Wolf's voice rasped painfully in his bruised throat.

Pierce held up one hand and the Wolf stepped back. Pierce handed the Soldier a file.

"The timetable grows increasingly tight," Pierce told him. "The target is level six. I want confirmed death in ten hours."

The picture was a red-haired woman. Name: Natalia Alianovna Romanoff.

"Her and the woman she's traveling with."

Suddenly he was swept up in memory. Another gray room. A thin, red-haired girl, attacking him, trying to strike him. He threw her to the ground. A voice called out. "Again." She wiped away the blood form a split lip and leapt at him, kicking with a dancer's grace. She was so young, so...delicate. How could they expect her to defeat him? It was wrong. But still, she attacked. And he struck. And the voice. "Again." "Again."

The Wolf's mangled voice snapped him out of the memory.

"You could send me after them. I'd love to get my hands on that bitch Rogers."

He lit up a cigarette.

"You shouldn't smoke, Brock. It's bad for you."

The Wolf barked a laugh.

The memory shifted. The cigarette was in the Soldier's hand. His left hand – flesh and bone. The girl was blonde, with thick glasses. "Not like that," someone was saying, exasperated. "Your thumb on the outside. Jesus, Rogers." He used his hands to help her make a fist. The hands were his, touching her hand. The voice was his. But it was speaking English. Wrong. He didn't speak English.

They were still talking.

"No. I want the Soldier for this. It's more...personal."

"Oh, I get personal."

The Wolf tossed his cigarette to the floor, ground it under his heel.

"Come on, Ice Man," he said, with a twisted, broken smile. "You've got a hot date."

* * *

**Hello everyone! I hope the past few weeks have been treating you well. Some of you may be affected by the Coronavirus pandemic, and if so, my sympathies. I work at a public library in Colorado, and my work has been closed to the public - and may soon be closed to staff as well. Good time to catch up on my posting and writing, eh?**


	17. Chapter 17

Chapter 17 - Stevie

January 11, 9:30 a.m.

* * *

They had arrived at the library as soon as it opened and asked for a laptop at the reference desk. Stevie looked over her shoulder the whole time, sure someone would recognize her, but it seemed that Natasha's dramatic makeover had done the trick. No one gave her a second look. Natasha herself was nearly unrecognizable – she had dyed her hair black and cut it into something severe and asymmetrical. She looked like an off-duty punk musician. Maggie's disguise was a pair of overalls with a dinosaur on them and a baseball cap she kept trying to take off.

"Just this once, let's say thank heavens for stereotypes," Natasha had said. "In the absence of other clues, people will look at the outfit and think 'boy'".

"If you say so," Stevie had said skeptically.

"We should give her an alias," Natasha had added with a sly sideways glance. "Maybe name her after her father?"

"Her father is dead," Stevie had responded. "Leave him out of this."

Natasha's grin had disappeared.

In the library, the two women found a sunny corner in the children's room where a rack of puppets sat beside a little wooden theater. Natasha perched the laptop on her knees and began to log in as Maggie toddled to the puppets and picked up a large rooster. Stevie wondered how her daughter was faring after yesterday. She flexed her hands, still tender even though the skin had healed. After her first exhausted sleep, Maggie had woken in the night crying. Stevie had to curl around the toddler like a mother bear to calm her. She had intended to stay awake herself, but her daughter's gentle breathing had calmed her so much that she slept in spite of herself.

Maggie was making the chicken hop up and down.

"Bok, bok!" She said.

The morning sun spilled over her face. Their little corner was full of light. Stevie felt it all slipping away from her. This peace. This moment. It would never come again. Suddenly, she felt horribly sad.

"What on earth?" Natasha whispered. She frowned at the screen. "What the hell is this?"

"Don't you know already know?" Stevie asked. "You got it, after all."

"I downloaded it. I didn't read it."

"Weren't you curious?"

"It wasn't my mission to know, so I didn't ask." Natasha smiled wryly. "Maybe I should have. Maybe then Nick would still be alive."

Stevie had stood to look over the other woman's shoulder at the screen.

"It's...A list of names?"

"More than that," Natasha replied. "Names, phone numbers, biometric identifiers, all extremely condensed. And...I think these are threat designations."

She was scrolling through the list almost faster than Stevie could follow.

"Hold on...Bruce is on this list." She typed a little. "And Clint. And Tony."

_This was downloaded from Insight…_

"This info was being loaded onto the Insight satellites, right?" Stevie asked. "To the carrier's AI. The carriers made to wipe out threats before they start."

Natasha looked up at her, eyes wide in horrified realization.

"This is a kill list," Natasha said. "_Bozhe moi_. When the carriers go up...There are thousands of names on this."

"We have to get this to Tony," Stevie said. "Before the carriers get into the air. The Iron Legion can stop at least some of the drones. And Rhodey can call in air support."

"Hello?"

A bright voice cut into their conversation. The two women almost jumped. A young librarian smiled at them, her hair dyed a rich mahogany brown. Her smile was jarringly cheerful.

"Just wanted to tell you, storytime's in a few minutes."

Natasha recovered first.

"Thanks," she said. "But we have to head out. Business."

"No prob." The librarian smiled at Maggie, who was pretending to feed legos to the chicken puppet. "What a cutie. Hey, hon!"

The girl ran to Stevie and hid behind her leg. The librarian gave Stevie an understanding look and left. _She's never been shy before. _Stevie picked Maggie up and the girl clung to her, burying her face in her mother's shoulder. _It's all this...this, _Stevie reflected. When they got to Stark Tower, things would be better.

_I should have retired when I first thought of it, _Stevie reflected. _But then...who would have stopped this?_

She sighed and kissed Maggie's cheek.

"I'm sorry," she whispered.

"This is new," Natasha said.

"What?" In this case, new was probably bad.

"This file. It wasn't here when I gave the drive to Fury." She frowned. "He must have put it there. It's encrypted, but I think..."

She typed something. On the screen, a little window opened. It was Nick Fury.

"Agent Romanoff," his voice blared. Natasha cursed and turned down the speakers.

Stevie looked around to see if anyone had seen, but the other parents all seemed to have gone to storytime – she could hear someone singing "If You're Happy and You Know It" from behind a room divider.

"If you have this file," Fury continued on the screen. "I'm probably dead."

He didn't look so good. One half of his face was bruised, the bruises he'd had when she'd last seen him in her apartment. Stevie couldn't tell where he was – but it wasn't his office. He filed against a background of peeling ecru paint over cinder blocks.

"Pierce is Hydra. You probably know that now, and I should have known sooner. But that's all in the past." He leaned forward, close to the screen. "I'm giving you the codes for access to the SHIELD mainframe. Use this voiceprint – Root Access, authorization, Fury, Nicholas J. My retinal scan is on this file, too. You know how to use it."

He took a breath, and ran one dark hand over his bald head. He looked...weary. In that moment, Stevie missed him terribly.

"If anyone can get in, Agent Romanoff, it's you. Don't let those Hydra bastards get away with this." He reached toward the screen, paused.

"I trust you," he said. "I've never regretted it. Make me proud."

The window went black. Stevie looked at Natasha, and was surprised to see tears in her eyes.

_Maybe not so surprising,_ she thought. _Even secret agents have friends._

Maggie squirmed, and Stevie took the excuse to put the girl down and look away so Natasha could compose herself. In a minute, Natasha cleared her throat.

"We need to get this to Tony Stark," she said, maybe a little hoarsely. "He could break into SHIELD remotely with this. We could ground those carriers. Shut the satellites down."

When she looked at Stevie, her glib mask was back in place.

"Ever stolen a car?"

* * *

**Two chapters today - thank you, Coronavirus isolation. **

**Why a library instead of an Apple store? As a librarian I like to sneak my own job into what I write as often as possible. My D&D games all involve libraries, too, lol. **


	18. Chapter 18

Chapter 18 – Wanda

January 11 – 10 a.m.

* * *

Wanda paced in the alley, hands pulled into her coat sleeves, breath steaming. There was a sudden gust of wind and Pietro appeared in a cyclone of fast food wrappers and discarded newspapers, dumping a disoriented man onto the ground in front of her.

They had been tasked by Pierce with finding the Black Widow, and had instead found Jasper Sitwell, Hydra analyst. Wanda had been discreetly scanning the minds of Hydra agents all morning, and inside of his was something interesting, a flash of something strange, the feeling of someone hiding a secret. Worth looking into, since Wanda doubted that Pierce actually expected them to find the legendary Black Widow by themselves.

Sitwell struggled onto one knee, jacket unbuttoned, glasses askew. Pietro wasn't the smoothest form of transportation out there – and he'd had no reason to be gentle.

"Have a nice breakfast, Mr. Sitwell?" Wanda asked sweetly.

"What do – what do you want?" Jasper Sitwell swallowed heavily. His dark skin had taken on an ashen cast, and Wanda stepped back slightly in case he decided to be sick on her boots. She liked these boots.

"Do you know who you're dealing - " Sitwell tried to rise and Pietro shoved him hard, forcing him to all fours. Wanda crouched fluidly in front of him.

"We know who you are, Jasper."

She took his chin in one hand. Little raindrops beaded his bald scalp and the lenses of his spectacles. Her own eyes were reflected there – glowing red. And then, she slipped into his mind.

_He was talking to an older man, gray-haired and paunchy – Stern. Wanda felt his frustration. He was a data analyst, but Pierce had him out glad handing this bureaucrat, this parasite. He could be doing so much more. Threaten the boss and you get smacked down. They walked down the stairs together, and Stern gave him a convivial embrace, whispered "Hail Hydra." His breath smelled like fish. Sitwell's stomach churned –_

– _Back –_

_Sitwell's stomach churned. He sat on the deck of the Lemurian Star, crammed into the galley with the other hostages, knees pulled up to his chest. The ship rocked from side to side. He'd never like the ocean. One of the pirates paced in front of him, hand on the butt of his automatic. The woman next to him started crying softly. The pirate came closer and she whimpered - Shut up, shut up you stupid bitch, you'll get us killed – He walked past and Sitwell exhaled. He couldn't understand it. This wasn't part of the plan. Maybe they were here for the satellite data – _

– _Back –_

" – _the satellite data!"_

_The woman he was talking to sighed. "Jasper..."_

"_They're treating Insight like a weapon – but it's so much more! The artificial intelligence is beyond revolutionary."_

"_I know, Jasper, but -"_

"_The archaeological discoveries made by satellites one tenth as advanced – We could find Attilan!"_

_The woman threw up her hands. "And there it is. Attilan again. How did I know you were going to bring up fucking Attilan?"_

"_Just look at these seafloor maps, Victoria..."_

"_No one cares about your alien conspiracy theory Jasper. Just get the satellites in the air."_

– _Attilan. That's interesting. Tell me more. –_

The memories broke down into a swirl of information – coordinates, contour maps of the ocean floor, blurry satellite photographs. Underneath the confetti of images, Wanda could feel Sitwell's mind resisting hers. There was something in his memory – something he was trying to keep a secret, even from himself.

_People had always tended to ignore him. He had no illusions about his own importance. In the machinery of Hydra, he was just a functionary. An awkward man with an embarrassing obsession. But if he was right – he knew he was right, if he could make them see it! - he'd be the next Zola. The next Oppenheimer! _

Wanda could feel the secret like a black glass wall, sliding under her hands. Slowly, slowly...she pushed.

– _I want to see. Show me. – _

_He wasn't supposed to be here. His security clearance wasn't technically high enough, but he had found a loophole. When he'd been assigned to Project Insight, he'd been given access to a subset of other projects. His colleagues hadn't bothered to read the whole list – after all Insight was more than a full-time job. They were working around the clock to get those satellites in the air, to fine tune the AI that controlled the drones. But Jasper Sitwell was nothing if not thorough, and he had discovered something called "TAHITI" - something that would normally require Level 1 clearance. _

_Surely it was a mistake, but Sitwell knew that knowledge was power. So he timed his visit to the Triskelion sub-basement for a time when he knew the most disinterested guards were on duty. Despite this preparation, his heart hammered in his chest as the guard scanned his badge, sure that he was about to be tased and hauled away for interrogation. But the tall woman just unlocked the door with a bored expression. _

_Behind the first set of doors was another. – An airlock? – He wondered what would justify the precaution. A biological weapon? There were no containment suits. The second set of doors was activated by a retinal scan. Once again, Sitwell feared they wouldn't open. Would the guard outside leave him stuck here between the doors? His shirt was growing sticky with nervous sweat. _

_The second set of doors opened into a small room – smaller than he'd expected. The lights flickered on. In the middle of the room was...the word that came to mind was "sarcophagus"...a metal box, roughly human-sized, tubes running out of it to various instrument panels that blinked and beeped softly. Sitwell felt an excitement that teetered on the edge of fear. Whatever was in there...it would change things for him. He knew it. He squared his shoulders and strode across the room with the confidence he wished he felt. _

_The surface of the sarcophagus was dark glass. At first he thought it was his own reflection swimming there, but then the lights came on inside the tank. The face was green. And then its eyes opened._

Wanda gasped, releasing Sitwell's mind so suddenly that he collapsed.

"What is it?" Pietro was beside her, holding her shoulders. She realized she was shaking. "What did you find?"

"There's something in the Triskelion," she said. "Something...alien."

"Alien...like...alien, alien?"

Wanda shrugged off her brother's arm. Sitwell lay on the ground, shuddering. For a moment she felt guilty, but she steeled herself and reached out again into his mind.

"Get up."

He did. He had no choice. Usually she would be more subtle than this, but with Insight so close to deployment, they were short on time for covert operations.

"Do you still have access to TAHITI?"

"Yes," Sitwell said without inflection.

"You will take us there."

* * *

**Hello all! I hope you are safe and well. And I hope you enjoy this chapter. Please let me know your feedback!**


	19. Chapter 19

Chapter 19 – Wanda

January 11, 2014, 10:30 a.m.

* * *

It was disorienting to see the room through her own eyes, after seeing it through Jasper Sitwell's memories. He was taller than she was, so every shadowy piece of equipment loomed out at her, unnaturally large. Pietro flipped the light switch and the fluorescent tubes flickered to life, buzzing almost inaudibly. The looming shadows resolved into a collection of freestanding monitors and screens, gathered around the sarcophagus like officiants at a strange ritual. It was a strange blend of technologies – chunky, yellowing plastic next to sleek, black touchscreens and holographic interfaces.

_How long has this room been here? _

The air smelled stale, like it had been recycled over and over again. Wanda glanced back at Sitwell, standing just inside the door, staring straight ahead but seeing nothing. She turned back to the sarcophagus. The buzz the lights grew louder – and then Wanda realized – the buzzing wasn't in her ears. It was in her mind. Her mouth went dry.

As always, Pietro sensed her fear. He took her arm.

"Are you sure about this?" He murmured, himself afraid to raise his voice in this strange place. "This room gives me the creeps."

His concern for her was like a strong wall encircling her. She smiled weakly and patted his hand. He knew as well as she did that they couldn't back away from this, not now that they were here.

The sarcophagus was dark as Wanda approached it – for a moment she saw her own face reflected in its surface, pale and huge-eyed. Then lights flicked on within it, triggered by her proximity. Wanda gasped. Sitwell's memory had elided the worst of it – half of the green face was scored with horrible wounds, the cheek torn away to reveal its teeth. Below the hips, its legs were gone – entrails floated in whatever viscous solution filled the chamber and suspended the creature like some horrible angel. Tubes and wires sprang from it like tentacles.

"Oh, God," she breathed. There was no way this thing could be alive.

And then, its eyes opened.

The buzz in her head became a spike. Wanda shrieked and stumbled backward against her brother's chest as he spouted shocked profanities.

"Shit! It's alive! Shit!"

"They've been keeping him alive," Wanda said, with growing horror, eyes drawn back to the poor ruined face, almost against her will. Its eyes followed her in mute entreaty. "I'm going to talk to him."

"What?" Pietro said. "That's a terrible idea! We have to get out of here..."

"He's been alone here, Pietro, utterly alone. Who knows for how long." She took a step forward. Pietro didn't stop her. "Imagine it."

She reached out with her hand, and her mind. The room broke into shards of glass around her. She was falling through space, a kaleidoscope of light. Pain, cold – scents she couldn't identify, colors without names. A blue-faced warrior hit her with a hammer like a meteor. Mountains were falling from the sky and the ground was breaking open. Her body dissolved into a thousand whirling sparks.

Pietro caught her before she hit the floor. She tried to touch his face but her hand was shaking too much.

"This is a really, _really_ stupid idea," he said.

"He's old." Wanda's voice was a croak in her own ears. "He's so old. So strange - I don't think I can do this alone."

Pietro looked at the coffin, which stood still and mute. Then back at her.

"I'll help you."

He took her hand and helped her up, holding her elbow when she stumbled on shaky legs. She took a deep breath and squeezed her brother's hand, borrowing his physical and mental strength. This time, when she touched the alien's mind, they both screamed.

The alien was older even than Wanda had imagined. In the depths of his mind, time lost meaning – the pieces of his past sliding over each other. So long, in the ice. So long, in this place. Running across the galaxy like hunted animals, changing shape and form, fluid as water, hiding but never safe. Shadows over the stars. Hooded Accusers with their hammers. He floated in darkness and pain, but worst was the silence - cut off from the minds of his people. Knives. Needles. The minds of his captors like hard, gray stones. Why had they not let him die?

Wanda collapsed to her knees, jarring her teeth so hard that she bit her own tongue. The pain helped bring her back to her own body.

It took her three tries to push herself to her hands and knees. She crawled to where Pietro lay on the floor, a trickle of blood coming from his nose. She understood why Sitwell had buried this place so deep. She would have liked to think it was a dream. But in its coffin, the creature's eyes still pleaded.

_-Let me die, child. Send me back to my people._

Gently, oh so gently. She did.

When Pietro came to, she was crying. He sat up shakily and brushed her hair back from her face, like he had since they were children.

"No more," she said. Her tongue was swollen. "No more of this."

Pietro pushed himself cautiously to his feet and helped her up.

"And Grandfather?" He said "The others?"

"I can't do this anymore. Not even for them." She dabbed at his nose with her sleeve. "Although..."

"I know that look," Pietro said wryly. "You think you can save them?"

"She can." They both knew who Wanda meant.

"But will she trust us?"

"She doesn't have a lot of options."

Together, they stumbled towards the door. They had to get out – soon enough those monitors would inform someone that their prisoner had died. Sitwell lay on the floor near the door. The psychic feedback from reading the alien must have knocked him out, too.

"Besides," Wanda said, looking at the man. "We'll come with a gift."

Pietro let her go so she could kneel beside Sitwell and lay her hands on his head. Wanda couldn't see him, but she knew her brother was looking away. He never liked to see her do this. Her eyes glowed red, as she reached out to devour Jasper Sitwell's mind.

* * *

**Hi all! Hope you are well. Working from home is rough, yo. :-/ **

**But hopefully my town is doing well enough to reopen some things soon.**

**Hope you enjoy the chapter - as always, I appreciate your feedback.**


	20. Chapter 20

Chapter 20

January 11, 11:30 a.m.

* * *

It had been hard to find a car with a baby seat, which made Stevie feel even guiltier about taking it. She had made a note of the license plate number so she could pay the person back later. If there was a later. If what they found on the thumb drive could be believed – and Stevie couldn't see a reason not to – then Hydra would try to murder several thousand people within days, and probably seize control of the government soon after. She couldn't think about it – at least not while negotiating the Anacostia Freeway.

"It's 11 on a Wednesday, why are there so many cars on the road?" Stevie muttered as Natasha opened the glove compartment.

"Yes!" Natasha exclaimed triumphantly. "Thank heavens this is a mom car – look, it's full of snacks!"

Natasha turned around to talk to Maggie, who was having fun kicking the back of Stevie's seat.

"Goldfish or fruit snacks, _kiska?_"

"Ga! Ga!" Maggie reached for the crackers.

"Good choice." Natasha opened the pack for her. "Now I get the fruit snacks."

She tore open the pack with her teeth while she continued poking through the van.

"CD's? Who has those anymore? Oooh, she has a Disney collection – Frozen?"

"Not Frozen." Stevie didn't think she could ever listen to "Let It Go" again.

"Lion King it is."

Natasha leaned back and put her feet up. Not for the first time, Stevie wondered how the woman could be so relaxed no matter what else was happening around her. Was it all a front? Or was it her way of whistling in the dark? Natasha tossed a fruit snack into the air and caught it in her mouth.

"Maybe we should have stolen one of those cars with built in televisions," she said, chewing. "Where did Captain America learn to hotwire a car, anyway?"

_Peggy_. "Nazi Germany. And we're borrowing, so get your feet off the dash."

Natasha smiled as she obediently took her sneakered feet off the dashboard, sitting cross-legged in the passenger seat. She leaned her head back and tapped one hand in time to "Circle of Life."

"What was Fury to you?" Stevie asked.

Natasha went very still. When she looked at Stevie, her smile was gone.

"You know who I used to work for," she said.

Stevie nodded.

"After that," she continued. "When I defected, after the things I had done, the only people who believed in me were Clint and Nick. And nothing against Clint, but Nick was the only one whose opinion meant a damn. He really stuck his neck out for me."

She popped another fruit gummie into her mouth.

"Fury and Clint aren't the only ones who believe in you," Stevie said. "I do."

Natasha turned to her, eyes wide. Her short hair and dramatic eyeliner made them look huge in her pale face.

"Why?" She asked.

Stevie had wondered that herself. Maybe it was the look she'd seen in the other woman's eyes when Fury was dying, and when she saw him again on that laptop screen. A girl who'd lost her father. Stevie had been that girl. You couldn't fake that. Or maybe it was just an act of faith.

"I don't know," she replied. "Call it instinct."

"That's a really stupid reason," Natasha said, her quirky smile coming back, almost in spite of itself.

"Well," Stevie shrugged. "It's all I've got."

Natasha nodded, as if she understood everything. She looked out the window, singing along to "Hakuna Matata" under her breath. In the back, Maggie chattered and dumped orange Goldfish crumbs all over the floor. Over the road, a green sign proclaimed that they were on the Baltimore-Washington Parkway, heading north. In a few hours they would be with Tony.

Natasha sat forward and frowned.

"I've seen that truck before," she said. "Twice."

"Coincidence?"

"Or it's looping around. Can we get off the road?"

"I'll see," Stevie replied. They were on an overpass, but she thought there was a ramp coming. "Where -"

_Bam!_

Something heavy hit the roof, and before Stevie could finish her question, a metal fist punched through it right in front of her, seized the steering wheel, and ripped it right out of the car. Stevie took her foot off the gas pedal, but it was too late. The car spun out of control.

_Maggie! _

Stevie tore off her seatbelt, prepared to shield Maggie with her body, but the car smashed into the concrete guard rail and ricocheted across the highway. As Stevie was launched through the window, she saw Natasha dive into the backseat and curl around Maggie, broken glass filling the car like snow.

Stevie managed to tuck and roll as she hit the road, but she still scraped the hell out of her right elbow as she landed. She came to her feet just in time to see the Winter Soldier stalking toward the car, where Natasha was trying to unbuckle a screaming Maggie from her car seat. She saw him walking in slow motion, like a monster in a nightmare. He pulled a gun from a holster on his back.

Stevie didn't even decide to move consciously. She launched herself across the street and tackled the man, taking him over the rail and off the bridge in a tangle of limbs. They hit the windshield of a car on the street below, caving it in. Even as the car spun, Stevie was on top of the man, clawing at his face, at his eyes. The car's spin was interrupted by a concrete pillar, and Stevie was flung into the road.

She stumbled to her feet. Car horns blared. A truck swerved, so close she felt the wind of it shake her body. The man stood, wiping blood from his eyes.

His eyes. Green. Like her daughter's. His dark hair was long. It hung straight to his chin, shadowed by stubble no one had cared to shave off. But his face...his face...she knew it better than her own.

"Bucky."

It was a breath. But the man heard it. He frowned. And spoke.

"Who the hell is Bucky?"

Stevie felt like she had come unglued from her body and was floating above herself, like she had in Stark Tower when she had first woken up in this strange future that was her life. Now it all made sense. Fury wasn't dead. Hydra wasn't back from the hell she'd sent them to in 1945. This was all a dream. It had to be. Because Bucky was dead. There was a hissing noise in her ears. The Winter Soldier was drawing another gun from a holster on his thigh, and all she could do was stare. He was going to shoot her. _He's dead, he's dead…_

Bucky raised the gun – and something hit her like a speeding car.

* * *

**I know you've been looking forward to this chapter - and I hope I did it justice. Let me know what you think.**


	21. Chapter 21

Chapter 21

January 11, 2014 – 12 p.m.

* * *

For a moment, Stevie believed she actually had been hit by a car, but then she realized she wasn't flying through the air – she was being carried at what must be incredible speed. The road smeared into a blur around her and she felt like she was being buffeted by incredible winds. She couldn't breathe. And then, everything stopped with a jolt that made it feel like she'd left her bones behind. Whoever was carrying her set her on her feet and her knees almost gave out under her.

"You're heavy, Captain!"

The voice had an accent Stevie couldn't place. The speaker was a young man, as tall as she was but lightly built. Despite his age, his swept-back hair was silver.

"Come on, Pietro! I can't hold them forever!"

A girl shouted from the passenger seat of a red sedan parked by the side of the road. They were back on the overpass. The van she had been driving was still there, hood crumpled, with a hole in the windshield. Black-clad bodies lay on the ground around the car.

"Keep your hair on!" The young man called back. He gestured toward the car. "After you."

Stevie had to step over one of the bodies to reach the back door. He was a STRIKE agent, clearly one of the support team for..._Bucky..._Stevie shoved the thought aside. He stared up, unblinking, but his body was unmarked. He was breathing. Stevie felt her skin crawl.

Natasha and Maggie were already in the backseat, and Stevie leaned across to take her daughter in her arms. The girl burst into tears again, clinging to her neck. Stevie checked the girl for blood, for bruises. Nothing. Nothing. She almost cried with relief, kissing her hair, her cheeks, as the young man, Pietro, pulled the car out into traffic. Natasha leaned back, face white, clutching her left arm.

"Are you alright?" Stevie asked.

"Nothing I haven't dealt with before," Natasha said, voice tight.

In the front seat, Pietro was tapping his fingers on the steering wheel restlessly.

"Our exit," the girl said, and he jerked the car across three lanes, so sharply that Natasha hissed in pain.

In the rearview mirror, Stevie could see the girl's eyes glowing red. There was something uncannily familiar about her face.

"Who are you?" Stevie asked.

"My name is Pietro Maximoff, and this charming lady is my sister Wanda." The young man turned to the back to give them a charming smile. "We're here to rescue you!"

"Watch where you're going!" The girl -Wanda – snapped. "We need to get off the road."

"Ok, _mom_," Pietro said sarcastically. But he did as she asked.

They were driving through a complex of apartment buildings, squat, blocky and identical except for the color of the bricks. Pietro turned and the street dead-ended in front of them, concrete barricades making the end of the development and the beginning of an overgrown park thick with bracken. Pietro blurred for a second, then he was opening Stevie's door for her.

"Where are we?" Stevie asked.

The girl answered as she got out of the car.

"We need a place to lie low."

Her voice was lower than Stevie had thought it would be, throaty. She tucked her long, black hair behind one ear and Stevie saw that her eyes weren't glowing anymore. They were a rather normal brown. Her face tickled something in Stevie's memory – but she felt a sudden stab in her temple.

"There are no cameras in there," the girl continued, gesturing toward the trees with her chin. "Harder to follow us."

"Who's first?" Pietro asked.

"No one," Wanda responded. "We have an injured woman and a baby, you idiot. We don't know what you moving them around would do to them."

"We're walking?" He asked incredulously. "You're killing me!"

Stevie glanced at Natasha. The other woman shrugged with her good shoulder. Stevie understood. They were alone, friendless and injured. What choice did they have but to trust these strangers? She boosted Maggie onto her hip, snuggled her close. Together they walked off the end of the street, into the trees.

* * *

**A short chapter today, folks. As some of you guessed, Stevie and Co. were rescued by the twins. Hope you enjoy - and I'll post the next one soon, I promise.**


	22. Chapter 22

Chapter 22 – Stevie

January 11, 2014 – 12:30 p.m.

* * *

They walked without speaking, following Wanda's elfin form, their feet crunching on dead leaves and fallen twigs. Stevie kept seeing his face in her mind, hearing his voice.

_Who the hell is Bucky?_

No. One step. Then another.

Maggie wailed as they walked, her cries doubly loud in the otherwise silent parkland. Stevie tried to soothe her, but she supposed after the day she'd had – the days she'd had – the girl was entitled to a tantrum. If only it didn't make her afraid every moment that they'd be followed – by the police if no one else.

_Please hush,_ Stevie thought, patting her daughter's back as she stepped over a fallen tree limb. _Or someone will think I'm kidnapping you._

One step. Then another. Don't think about...him...try not to think at all.

Pietro looked back impatiently. He'd been...flickering...as they walked. Scouting ahead with his unnatural speed and darting back to join them, creating little gusts of wind that rattled branches and sent dead leaves whirling into the air. In the pauses when Maggie stopped for breath, Stevie could hear Natasha's labored breathing. The other woman's face was white, but she walked doggedly ahead, still clutching her left arm. She stepped over a root and stumbled, and Stevie reached out to her.

"I'm alright," Natasha said, tightly. Then, more gently, "Look after Maggie."

And suddenly, they emerged from the overgrown perimeter into a manicured park. Gravel paths wound between little ponds, and elegant bridges arched over waterways still fringed with ice. Maggie's wail reverberated in the open space, free from the cover of trees.

"I could calm her for you," Wanda said, reaching a slender hand toward Maggie's back, a slight, red glow around her fingertips. "She would sleep, and we could talk."

Stevie slapped Wanda's hand away.

"We'll talk now," she growled. "Who the hell are you? I need more than just your names this time."

In the blink of an eye, Pietro stood in front of his sister, trying to stare Stevie down. She met him glare for glare. Wanda took his arm and pulled him back.

"Alright." She sighed. "We grew up in Novo Grad."

"Oh," Natasha said, her voice heavy with understanding.

"Yes," Wanda said. "During the first wave of bombings, when the Sokovian People's Army besieged the city, two shells hit our apartment. The first detonated. The second...didn't."

"We were hiding under the bed," Pietro growled. "It was three feet from our faces. A shell with Tony's Stark's name on it. For two days we waited for Tony Stark to kill us."

"Our parents died," Wanda continued, as if he hadn't spoken. "And we...changed."

"You got your...powers," Stevie said, shifting to her other arm, bouncing her. Maggie had quieted to a moaning whine.

_Powers, like those children at the castle. Why does everything keep coming back? _She saw him in her memory again. Green eyes, long hair. So confused. _Who the hell is Bucky?_

_No! _

"What happened to you?" Stevie asked.

"What do you think?" Pietro said. "In that meat grinder, two children, scared and alone?"

"We were weapons," Wanda said. "For whoever could pay."

"Or threaten."

"We worked for one side, and another. For gangsters, and warlords. And then, for Hydra."

"So what brought about this change of heart?" Natasha asked.

"I looked into Pierce's mind," Wanda said. "And I saw annihilation. We were told if we helped him there would be a place for us, and people like us. I want that, Captain. We've seen so many friends disappear."

In Stevie's memory, a voice was shouting, _I watched them disappear into labs, cut apart by madmen your government set free_...She shook her head. Wanda shook back her hair, looked at Stevie with those familiar dark eyes.

"But not at that cost. Please, put an end to this."

"We know you keep your word," Pietro added. "We want your protection, after this is over. For us, and others like us."

"Of course," Stevie said. "Of course I will."

The twins looked at each other. Nodded ever so slightly.

"It's happening tomorrow," Wanda said.

* * *

There was still snow in the shadows of the trees, but most of it had melted.

They had talked, and planned, until Maggie's cries had subsided into sniffles, then silence. Now she was snuggling against Stevie's chest, inside her jacket, sucking her thumb. Stevie was always warm. Stevie sat by the shore of a small pond. The trees rose straight and bare, reflected perfectly in the still water. A family of deer walked out of the trees in front of her across the pond. Stevie held her breath, looking at them, a slender doe and spotted fawn.

A branch snapped behind her and the deer bolted, hooves ringing off the planks of the bridge like gunshots.

"Sorry," Natasha said. She sat beside Stevie slowly, wincing.

"How's the arm?" Stevie asked.

"It'll be better in a minute," Natasha answered. "How are you?"

"I think Wanda's information is trustworthy. She has no reason to lie."

"No, I mean...How are you?"

Stevie knew what Natasha had meant. As she sat by the lake for the past couple minutes, she had methodically considered everything implied by Bucky showing up on a highway seventy years after he was supposed to be dead.

"He smiled," Stevie said. "Pierce. He came to Maggie's birthday party. He picked her up, and he smiled. And the whole time he had Bucky hidden away in the basement like...like..."

"A frozen pizza?" Natasha suggested.

"I'll rip his head off."

"No," Natasha said. "You won't."

"Well, I want to."

Natasha had been slowly stretching her arm over her head while talking. There was a sudden pop.

"That feels better," she said, wiggling her fingers. She looked out across the water. "You know, in the spring this place will be full of water lilies. Pink and purple and white."

"At this point," Stevie said. "I'm not sure I'll get to visit in the spring."

"Pierce will send him after you." Natasha looked at Stevie, face solemn. "Bucky."

Stevie's part of the plan was to take Wanda and Pietro and get to the carrier, to shut it down before it could initiate the drone strikes.

"I know," Stevie answered. "It's what I would do, in his position. It's his trump card."

"What will you do?" Natasha asked. "If you have to choose between him and...everyone else?"

Stevie looked down at Maggie, snuggled her close. The girl was blinking slowly, clearly tired but unwilling to sleep after everything that had happened. Stevie kissed her hair.

"I took ethics in high school," she said. "The teacher gave us a question. You're on a bridge next to a stranger. Below you is a train. If the train keeps going, it will hit a group of children on the tracks. There's no way to warn them. But if you push the stranger onto the tracks, the train will stop and the children will be saved."

Natasha waited in silence for a long moment.

"And?" She asked. "What's the answer?"

"If I can push someone else, I can jump in front of the train myself."

"You're going to metaphorically throw yourself in front of a train." Natasha shook her head. "And what if he doesn't know you?"

"He will."

There was a sound of wings and both women started. From among the dry reeds, a huge gray bird took flight. Stevie watched it beat the air, wingtips skimming the lake as it flew. At that moment she could imagine the water covered in flowers, all the life underground, waiting to burst forth. At that moment, she felt no doubt at all.

_He will know me. If it isn't true now - I will make it true. _

"Alright," Natasha said. "I have another issue with your plan, but I didn't want to bring it up in front of the twins. You wanted me to go to the Triskelion and use Fury's codes to declassify all the SHIELD files. To expose Hydra to the world."

"It's all got to go."

"The access point where I can use Fury's voice print and retinal scan is in his office – and either Pierce will be there or he'll have his best guards there. I'm a very good spy," Natasha said. "But I'm not that good. Not on such short notice."

"That's the beauty of it," Stevie said. "You'll just walk in."

"Pierce will never believe I'm Hydra."

"He will, with the right encouragement."

Stevie looked down at Maggie. The girl had finally fallen asleep against Stevie's chest, tucked into her jacket, like she had done when she was a tiny baby. Natasha looked stricken, face white as it had been on her walk through the woods with a dislocated shoulder.

"You can't mean..."

"I do," Stevie said softly. "I said I trusted you. I meant it. Besides, she's safer with you than she is anywhere else right now. You're singularly lethal."

Natasha's lip wobbled for a moment, but then she set her jaw. "I'll keep her safe. I promise."

"I know," Stevie said. "Now help me get this stuff out of my hair."

* * *

**The plan takes shape! The team is in a real park right now - Kenilworth Park and Aquatic Gardens. There are some lovely pictures online, and I highly recommend giving it a google.**


	23. Chapter 23

Chapter 23 – The Soldier

* * *

In a secret, windowless room under the Triskelion, the Winter Soldier remembered snow.

It had snowed many times during his long career...how long ? A voice inside him wondered. He frowned. That was irrelevant. Snow was irrelevant. In his memory, snow fell through a ragged hole in the roof of a small church. There was a statue of a woman, hand raised, a gentle smile on her lips. And beside him, another woman, just out of sight. If he turned his head, he would see her…

The Winter Soldier realized that his hand, his right hand, was shaking. He clenched it into a fist so the technicians wouldn't see. Why was he so afraid to turn his head and look at her?

Voices. Pierce and the others, talking about his mission. His failure. Both women had escaped. He should have felt shame; he had been trained to feel it. The mission was everything. But instead, something nagged at him, like a broken tooth.

Wood smoke. The smell of hay.

Impossible.

"Soldier!" The slap caught him by surprise, even though it shouldn't have. He shook his head. Pierce was glaring into his eyes. Blue eyes. Like hers.

_Bucky_. The voice was right, but the hair was wrong.

"The woman," he said. Trying to explain himself, excuse his failing. "I knew her."

Pierce sighed, slumping forward with a bowed head. He pushed himself up from the arms of the chair. Bucky felt shame at his disappointment. If he could only explain. But Pierce had turned away.

"Wipe him," he said to a white-coated technician. "And start over."

"Please," The Soldier said, but Pierce was already walking away. "Please. I knew her." The technician looked at him strangely, then looked away.

Another voice inside him answered. _Stupid. Begging never does any good. _

But he had spoken in English. The voice in his mind was speaking English. The Soldier didn't speak English.

He opened his mouth for the rubber bite guard and let the technicians shackle him into the chair, as he had been trained. But inside himself, he held on to those images, those memories. In that moment, it felt like they mattered more than his mission, more than his life.

A blonde braid. Snow falling through a hole in the roof. Someone leaning on his shoulder. Laughter. The woman on the bridge, her blue eyes wide in horror.

_Bucky._

And then, the pain.

* * *

**A short one! Don't worry - I'm posting two chapters today. I've been inspired recently and have some chapters in the bank. Let's hope I don't jinx myself...**


	24. Chapter 24

Chapter 24 – Stevie

January 11, 2014 – 3p.m.

* * *

It took Stevie longer than she'd imagined to get the color bleached out of her hair and dye it something approaching its original color. Plenty of time to think.

Natasha had left quickly after they'd finalized their plan, saying she needed to lay down some tracks. Stevie had learned from experience that the more she made of a departure, the more upset Maggie would become, so she kissed her daughter's head, took one last breath of her scent, and smiled as she said goodbye.

"See you soon," Natasha had replied.

Maggie had waved over Natasha's shoulder. Natasha had always been good with kids. Maggie had always loved her.

_She'll be okay,_ Stevie thought, as the stylist blow-dried her hair. She felt a stab of guilt – she was using her own daughter as bait. Maybe she could have found another way…

_No. _There was no time to second-guess her decision. She had to focus. _Please, _Stevie prayed. _Please, let Maggie be safe. Please, let this work._

"Alright. We're done!" The stylist said. She had a slight French accent, which made Stevie feel very nostalgic. "Let's take a look."

The woman spun Stevie to face the mirror. She remembered another mirror, yellow lamplight, seventy years ago, after a suicidal rescue. And now, here she sat, planning to rescue the same man.

_Everything that's happened, everything I've gone through – and here I am, back in the same place._

Stevie realized that the stylist was looking over her shoulder anxiously, waiting to see if she liked the color.

"It looks great," she said. "Thanks."

Luckily, Natasha had given her enough money to leave a generous tip.

* * *

Stevie was fumbling her change back into her pocket when she saw the pay phone. She hadn't noticed it on the way into the salon. Pay phones used to be everywhere, before her seventy-year nap, but then people couldn't carry phones around in their pockets. Seeing one like this, well, it almost felt like a sign.

_Is Hydra tapping Tony's phone? Is that possible? _Stevie wasn't sure the kind of technology that would be required to do that. She did know, thanks to Wanda, that when the carrier under the Triskelion went up, one beneath the Hudson River would go up at the same time. The drones on the carrier would target Tony, Pepper, and thousands of other people in the city.

_Worth the risk._

After a moment's thought, Stevie dialed Pepper's cell phone number, reasoning that she was less likely to be tapped and more likely to pick up.

"Hello?" Pepper's voice seemed to come out of another dimension, a past where Stevie's life had still made sense.

"Hey, Pepper."

"Stevie? Wait a second..." Stevie heard a door close in the background and when she spoke again, Pepper's voice was hushed. "Are you alright? Where are you? SHIELD put out a call for your arrest!"

"What?" Stevie said. She'd known Pierce was looking for her, but making it official took guts. What kind of excuse did he use? Surely not everyone in SHIELD could have bought it, whatever it was. _My reputation has to count for something._

But that wasn't important.

"Actually, that doesn't matter," Stevie continued. "I don't have much time. Tell Tony to mobilize the Iron Legion. I know this sounds crazy, but he needs to be prepared for a drone strike of massive proportions. Are you in Stark Tower now?"

There was a pause. "No."

"Get there as soon as you can."

"I will," Pepper said. "Stevie...whatever you're doing...please be careful."

Stevie smiled. "I'll do my best."

* * *

"So I know you're a master strategist or something," Pietro said, eating a pretzel from a food truck down the street. "But I still don't see why you need this old uniform."

"Don't suppose I could ask you to take it on faith?" Stevie said.

They stood just outside the Smithsonian. A gray cement wall gave them a little cover from the door and the main staircase. The last visitors were coming out the doors, zipping up their coats. The sun had just set, and streetlights were coming on, cold and white. She needed the uniform for the same reason she needed her hair to be blonde. Because she didn't just want to save the world. She wanted to save Bucky.

And for that, he had to remember her.

The security guard hobbled out the door, calling out goodbyes to the departing stragglers. He looked at least eighty years old.

"Alright," Stevie said. "I'm going to introduce myself and ask for the uniform."

Pietro and Wanda didn't really look alike, but they had the same flat, incredulous expression.

"It is mine, after all," Stevie continued.

"Sure, good," Pietro said. "Or how about this."

He blurred. As he flashed past the guard, almost too fast to see, the resulting gust of wind made the elderly man fumble the key.

"Aw, shucks," he said, bending slowly to retrieve it.

Stevie jogged up the stairs in a few long strides.

"Here you are." She handed him the key.

"Oh, thank you miss." He adjusted his thick glasses and smiled up at her. "My goodness, you're tall. Has anyone ever told you - you look a bit like Captain America?"

"All the time," Stevie said.

There was another gust as Pietro flashed back out of the museum, and Stevie had to steady the guard to keep him from stumbling.

"Don't know what's going on with this weather," he grumbled. "Well, have a good night, miss."

"You, too."

Around the corner, Pietro was waiting with her uniform, stuffed into a gift-store tote bag embroidered with birds.

"Did you pay for that?" Stevie asked.

"_A teremburádat!_" Pietro stuffed the bag into her hands. "I can't get a break between the two of you!"

* * *

Sterling Cleaners was closed by the time they arrived, the white trucks lined up neatly behind the low building.

"What now?" Pietro asked.

Wanda rolled her eyes and she sipped her gas station coffee.

"My shield," Stevie answered. "I left it here for safe keeping."

"At a laundry?"

"I didn't have a lot of options at the time."

She left the twins at the corner. As she approached the dumpster where she'd hidden her shield, a light flared, a shadow loomed in the doorway. She started, before she recognized the face.

"Rovshan," she said.

He flicked his lighter closed, stuffed it in his pocket and took a deep drag on his cigarette.

"Figured you'd be back eventually," he said. "How're the hands?"

"Much better."

Stevie hadn't actually thought about them for a long time. She flexed them experimentally. Rovshan took one of her hands and ran his thumb over the skin of her palm. He raised his eyebrows.

"Huh. I guess you really are a superhero."

He reached behind the dumpster and pulled out her shield, wrapped in old sheets. Stevie unwrapped it, ran her hand over the star. It felt good to hold it again.

"Thank you," she said. He nodded silently, blew smoke into the air. She should just leave.

"Why did you stay?" She asked.

The man shrugged.

"I used to be a doctor," he said. "A mob doctor, but still. And I have the truck. Maybe I'll be able to help."

"It's happening tomorrow," Stevie said.

Rovshan nodded, took another drag.

"I figured," he said. "Or you wouldn't have come back for it."

"So, speaking of your truck..."

Rovshan gave her a half smile, raising his eyebrow.

"Can you give me another ride?"

He flicked the butt of his cigarette into the pavement, where it sparked and guttered.

"Thought you'd never ask."

* * *

**So...I was checking some continuity details, and I realized the format of my chapter headings changes ever so slightly throughout this story. I'm too lazy to go back and change them so they all match, so sorry everyone. You and I will just have to live with it.**

**Preparations are in the works, and we see Rovshan again - who got a surprising amount of love from random readers, which would befuddle him, I'm sure.**

**Any similarity of museum guards to Stan Lee is entirely intentional.**


	25. Chapter 25

Chapter 25 – Wanda

January 11, 2014 – 3:30 p.m.

* * *

"I don't see why she needs to get her hair done," Pietro grumbled around a mouthful of nutella crepe.

"Don't talk with your mouth full."

Wanda inhaled the steam from her coffee, thinking of a pair of deadened green eyes. And the mind behind them, like a man trapped in a frozen lake, screaming under the ice.

"She knew him long ago," Wanda said. "The Soldier. She wants to save him."

Pietro shrugged. Wanda snagged his plastic fork and took a bite.

"Hey!" He yelled, holding the takeout box above his head, out of her reach. "If you wanted one you should have ordered one!"

A jogger looked around in alarm at the shouting, and Pietro scooted to the far side of the park bench. Wanda sipped her latte.

"You're sure she doesn't remember you?" He asked, after a few jealously-guarded bites.

"If she did, I'd know."

"We could still turn her in to Pierce," Pietro said. "You know, if you're having second thoughts."

"Do you want to be that person?" Wanda asked. "The kind of person who would do that?"

She was looking at the statue at the center of the park - a man on a horse, green with verdigris – but she could feel Pietro's mind beside her, red and spiky with shame. She looked down into her lap.

"I'm tired of digging my hands into the mud," she murmured. "I want to be clean."

Pietro handed Wanda the fork and set the takeout box on the bench between them. She took another bite - mostly whipped cream.

"What about Paris?" Pietro asked.

"What about it?"

Grandfather had taken them to Paris, right after he found them in Novo Grad. They'd been...thirteen? Fourteen? Hungry and hollow-eyed. Grandfather's memories of the war had passed over his mind like shadows everywhere they went. Her own memories of war had been very fresh.

"We could go there," Pietro said. "We don't have to work for Pierce or the Mandarin – or your Captain. We could start another life."

Grandfather had taken them to the Eiffel Tower, had laid her hand on the sun-warmed metal and let her look into his mind, see it through his eyes. The whole tower had thrummed like a harp string under his wrinkled hands. That night, they'd gone to Shabbat service at the Victory Synagogue. Wanda's parents had never been devout, but that night she had felt the prayers around her, lapping against her like warm, golden waves. It was the first time she'd thought faith could give her anything. It was the first time she'd thought her powers could be beautiful.

"In hiding?" Wanda asked. She took another bite, holding her hand under her fork to keep the crepe from slipping off. "We're like squatters in our own lives. Don't you want a home?"

"That's what the Mandarin was going to give us."

"And you believed her?" Wanda laughed bitterly, handing Pietro the fork. "She and Pierce are two of a kind. I'm sick of working for people whose minds I can't bear to touch."

The Mandarin was worse than Pierce, in one way at least, because Wanda couldn't read her mind. Whenever they were together, it gaped at the edge of her awareness like an open grave. She felt like she would fall into it.

"Will Grandfather be safe with her?" Pietro asked. "What if she...sways him?"

Grandfather's mind was like the tower – old, but strongly rooted. Humming with restrained power. Warm in response to warmth, and cold in response to coldness. Even the Mandarin, for all her abilities, would struggle to find purchase there.

"His mind is strong."

Pietro nodded.

"Will he understand?"

Wanda remembered that first Shabbat in Paris. After service, there had been a dinner. The young greeted her grandfather with nods, but the older people...they embraced him, kissed his hands. Thanked him, with tears in their eyes. They loved him. And seeing him through their minds, Wanda loved him too.

"Of course he will," she answered. "He's family."

* * *

**Man, I love these kids. They just keep taking over everything because I love them so much. **

**Hope you're all hanging in there! **


	26. Chapter 26

Chapter 26 - Stevie

January 12, 2014 - 5:30 a.m.

* * *

The laundry truck pulled into the Triskelion loading dock early the next morning, and the three climbed from it with varying degrees of stiffness. Their breath steamed in the cold, still air. Stevie looked around warily, but the subterranean space was empty. The sharp slam of Rovshan's door echoed in the quiet.

Pietro stretched backward, groaning theatrically.

"That was, without a doubt, the single worst night of my life!"

"Hey, at least it wasn't the dirty laundry," Rovshan replied with a grin.

They had spent the night in Rovshan's truck, and hidden inside his laundry tubs for the drive over - an experience Stevie had certainly never planned to repeat. In the darkness of the truck bed, lit by the anemic glow of Wanda's phone, she had explained her plan to the twins. It was a gamble, but with the twins' unique abilities at her disposal, it just might work.

Thanks to her time in Europe during the War, Stevie could sleep wherever she had to. After their planning session, Stevie had leaned up against a laundry tub and dozed, unperturbed by the cold, as Wanda shivered and Pietro's high-speed fidgeting made the whole truck vibrate. Now, seeing Pietro blur restlessly around the truck, she appreciated again how difficult the night must have been for him.

"Alright," Stevie said. Pietro flickered to her side. "It's go time. Rovshan?"

The man looked up, one foot already on the running board.

"Thank you."

He smiled.

"Good luck, Captain," he said.

"You, too."

_I'll certainly need it,_ she thought as Rovshan pulled away, the smell of diesel exhaust filling the dim concrete enclosure.

"Well?" Pietro said beside her. "I thought it was go time."

Wanda smacked his arm. "Be patient," she hissed.

"No, you're right," Stevie said. She had been woolgathering. It was hard not to, in this calm before the storm. "I'm ready."

Pietro nodded, picked her up, and the corridors of the Triskelion smeared around her like wet paint. They stopped with a jolt and she gasped, reaching a hand to the wall to keep herself from falling. _Still haven't gotten used to it,_ she thought, swallowing to calm her stomach. Pietro blinked out from beside her and returned with Wanda, who handled the situation much more gracefully.

They were outside the IT office, in one of SHIELD's lower levels. Unlike the upper level's futuristic all-glass, thumbprint and badge-activated doors, the door to this office was black metal with a frosted window, a smudged keypad above the handle.

Stevie knocked at the door. Beside her, Pietro fidgeted. He had been skeptical about this part of the plan.

_Why not just go straight to the hangar bay?_ He had said. _Why delay?_

She had paused, at thought, remembering how she'd felt, just days ago. How angry. How...betrayed.

_Because SHIELD is full of good people, _she had said. _And they deserve to know the truth. _

_And because the chaos of the revelation will help cover our entry and the Black Widow's mission? _Wanda added, a cynical smile incongruous on her youthful face.

Stevie had nodded. _That, too. _

A stocky, gray-haired woman opened the door, eyes widening behind her tortoiseshell glasses as she realized who Stevie was.

"Hello, Luanne," Stevie said. Beside her, Pietro sighed and rolled his eyes. "Can we come in?"

The woman quickly looked up and down the corridor before beckoning them into the office. The last time Stevie had been here had been to talk about a problem with her email account. She was almost surprised to see that nothing had changed. The same surprisingly small cluster of cubicles, computers with double monitors, incomprehensible comics and jokes pinned up everywhere. Then again, that had only been a few weeks ago. Stevie shook her head. The past few days felt like a lifetime.

Besides Luanne, there was only one other person in the office - a tall young man trying to grow a lackluster beard.

_The rest must be out on calls,_ Stevie thought. _Probably easier, if something goes wrong._ And what would she do, in that case? Hold Luanne hostage and force the man to do what she wanted? _No_.

The young man stood up.

"Captain?" He said. "What…?"

"It's alright...Hunter?"

"Taylor," he said.

"Ah. Sorry."

"No problem."

"Do we really have time for…" Pietro interjected, before Wanda swatted him in the arm.

"My friend is right," Stevie said ruefully. "We don't have much time."

The two stared from her, to Pietro, to Wanda, back to her, stunned and silent. _Time to be the Captain._

"Look, something terrible is about to happen," she said. "And I need your help."

Luanne and Taylor shared a look. Then Luanne turned to Stevie, jaw set.

"What do you need, Captain?" She said.

Stevie felt a surge of relief. _My sterling reputation counts for something after all._

"I need to send a message to every SHIELD employee that I can, right now," she said. "Everyone in the building, everyone on the grounds. Is that possible?"

This time, it was Hunter who answered.

"Oh, definitely." He was already sitting down at his computer, clicking and typing as he spoke. "Video or just audio?"

"Both," Stevie answered. "If I can."

"I'll just hook up my webcam…" He fiddled with something attached at the top of his screen. "What's the admin access code, Lu?"

As Luanne told him, Stevie saw Pietro fiddling with a little plastic toy Superman hanging from someone else's cubicle. Wanda hissed something at him and he put it down.

"Alright, Captain," Luanne said. "We're ready to patch you in."

"Just sit in the chair and look directly at the camera," Taylor said, pointing to the little round ball at the top of his screen. "Don't look at the monitor. Rookie videoconferencing mistake."

Stevie sat down, and Luanne and Taylor adjusted things around her.

"Ready?" Luanne asked.

Stevie took a deep breath. She had thought, during her long night in Rovshan's truck, about what she would say. Now, she just had to do it.

"Yes."

The camera's green light turned on, and on the screen, a little window showed Stevie herself, blinking. She tried not to look at it. It was harder than she thought.

"Attention all SHIELD Agents," she began. "This is Captain Rogers. You've heard a lot about me over the past few days. Some of you were even ordered to hunt me down. But I think it's time you know the truth."

She paused. Even after everything, it still hurt to say what came next.

"SHIELD is not what we thought it was. It's been taken over by Hydra. Alexander Pierce is their leader. The STRIKE and Insight crew are Hydra as well. I don't know how many more. But I know they're in the building. They could be standing right next to you."

Out of the corner of her eye, Stevie saw Taylor and Luanne give each other frightened looks. She could be signing SHIELD's death warrant. If this worked as she hoped - SHIELD would tear itself apart. _Sorry Peggy._

"They almost have what they want. Absolute control. They killed Nick Fury. And it won't end there. If you launch those helicarriers today, Hydra will be able to kill anyone that stands in their way. Unless we stop them."

It wasn't just SHIELD's death warrant she was signing. If this worked, agent would fight agent. People who thought they were friends would kill one another. She'd considered it, over that dark night. She could strike fast, and anonymously, like Pietro wanted. Maybe that would avoid bloodshed. But then, the guilty would have time to bury their trails. The truth would stay hidden. The people who had lied, and murdered, who had taken Bucky from her, who had turned him into that...thing...they would never be brought to justice. The thought filled her with fury.

_That can never be allowed to happen._

"I know I'm asking a lot," she continued. "The price of freedom is high. It always has been. But it's a price I'm willing to pay. If I'm the only one, then so be it. But I'm willing to bet I'm not."

She gave a nod to Taylor, who started a little before he turned the camera off. Pietro clapped mockingly.

"Lovely," he said. "Did you write it down, or was that off the top of your head?"

Stevie ignored him.

"Thank you Luanne, Taylor," she said. "Before we go, can you give us access to the secure elevator? We need to get to the Project Insight hangar."

"Sure thing," Taylor said, sitting back down at his computer. "Wait...no."

"What?"

He typed. Clicked. Shook his head.

"The elevator has been locked out. The hangar is...opening."

"Oh no," Luanne said softly. Pietro cursed in a language Stevie didn't know.

"Change of plan," she told the twins, who looked at her with matching, inscrutable expressions. "We'll need to go straight to the airfield."

Stevie turned back to Luanne and Taylor.

"The server room is pretty secure. You should lock yourselves in, wait for this to blow over. It shouldn't take too long."

"No, ma'am," Luanne said simply, pulling herself up to her full height. "We're SHIELD agents, and we'll fight to protect what SHIELD stands for. We'll do everything we can."

Stevie smiled. There was still so much good in SHIELD. She saluted them.

"Good luck."

"You too."

"Oh, we can go now? Sure you don't want a tea break?" Pietro snarked as they left the room.

"Enough," Stevie said. Surprisingly, he shut up. "We have a plane to catch."

* * *

**It begins...**

**Sad story - this chapter, along with the next three, were lost when my old laptop crashed, months ago, plunging me into a bout of writer's block. I've rewritten them, obviously, and I think they're just as good. ;-)**

**Hope you're well, and I look forward to seeing what you think of the next few chapters - they'll be action-packed!**


	27. Chapter 27

Chapter 27

January 12, 2014 - 5:45 a.m.

* * *

Pietro left Stevie at the edge of the Triskelion's airfield, where she crouched in the shadows behind a troop carrier. Her announcement had worked - the tarmac was chaos, agents fighting agents, blasts of machine gun and pistol fire all around her - but Stevie's eyes were only on the sky. The Triskelion's floodlights were so bright that they drowned out the stars. In that flat, black pool, like some terrible leviathan, the Insight carrier hung, its glass panopticon glowing.

Pietro and Wanda appeared at her side in a gust of wind.

"It's worse than I imagined," Wanda murmured, dark eyes glued to the carrier.

"My God," Pietro said. "Wait...what are those?"

A cloud of black flecks, tiny in comparison to the carrier's bulk, were emerging from its sides like a flock of crows.

"The drones," Stevie said. Her stomach clenched in despair. They were too late. Unless…

She turned to the young man beside her. He was still staring upwards, face gone pale as his frosted hair.

"Pietro," she said, making him start. "How fast are you? Can you...catch them? Knock them away?"

"I...I don't know," he stammered. In their short acquaintance, Stevie had never seen him like this. All his swagger, his easy confidence, was gone. Suddenly he seemed very young.

"I've never done anything like this."

Stevie clapped him on the shoulder. He wasn't the first young man she'd had to give a pre-battle speech.

"You're the only person who can," she said, firmly. "You're all we've got."

Pietro met her eyes. He almost looked...panicked.

"Just one, Pietro" she said, voice soft. "One is enough."

The young man took a deep breath, and nodded. And then he was gone, leaving Stevie's hand hanging in the air.

_God speed, Pietro._

She turned to Wanda. "We need a plane."

"Yes," the girl said. Her eyes were already glowing red. "Follow me."

Before Stevie could react, Wanda stepped out into the light.

With a muffled curse, Stevie rushed to shield her - she was right in the open, a target for either side. There was a shout from the left. Stevie raised her pistol. A squad of STRIKE agents had spotted them across the tarmac. They ran toward her, their own pistols ready. _Hit the leader in the face with the shield. A good ricochet and I can get the one on his right. Shoot the others. _She unslung her shield to throw it - but she didn't need to. As one, the men stopped, blinked, then turned and jogged in the other direction.

_Wanda._ She was doing this. Stevie looked over the shoulder. The girl had already walked out ahead of her, untroubled by the shouts and gunfire. Stevie followed, eyes darting everywhere, shield and gun still up. Agents on both sides parted around them without ever noticing they were there. The hair on the back of her neck stood up. As much as Stevie believed Wanda and trusted what the other woman had told her, she didn't like relying on a power she didn't understand.

Stevie heard the helicopter before she saw it.

"Get down!"

She pushed Wanda behind her, against the side of a troop carrier, using shield and body to protect her. An Apache helicopter roared down from one of the rooftop helipads, chain gun firing a deafening drumbeat. Combatants on the tarmac scattered.

"Who's piloting that thing?" Wanda shouted in Stevie's ear.

"Whoever it is," Stevie shouted back. "They don't seem picky!"

With a whoosh, the helicopter launched a hellfire missile, and a quinjet only thirty feet away from them exploded into flame. Stevie held the shield over them as shrapnel pinged off its surface. They were destroying the quinjets before anyone could use them. _Probably Hydra_. At least, Stevie hoped so.

"Wait here!" Stevie shouted.

Counting on the chaos on the attack to cover her, Stevie leaped to the top of the troop carrier, shield ready. The helicopter had circled back, gun already beginning its bone-shaking tattoo. She aimed for the tail, throwing her shield full force. The shield smashed the tail rotor, and as it bounced back obediently to Stevie's waiting hand, the helicopter spun to the ground and crashed in a ball of fire, fragments of its broken blades shooting past her.

She jumped back down to where Wanda waited.

"Good shooting, Captain," she said.

"Thanks." Stevie helped the other woman to her feet. "Let's get out of here."

They ran to the quinjet, and Stevie entered her access code into the doorpad. It blinked red.

"Damn," she said. They'd blocked her.

"Can you get in?" Wanda asked. The light of the burning helicopter cast red shadows on her pale face.

"Let's see," Stevie grinned. "There's more than one way to hotwire a car."

Wanda raised an eyebrow quizzically.

"Tony Stark told me his emergency bypass code once," Stevie said. "And I have a very good memory." The pad blinked green.

"Still works," she said. "Come on. We've got a carrier to catch."

* * *

Wanda had never liked flying. She sat uneasily in the co-pilot's seat and squeezed the pressure point on her wrist to try to keep from getting airsick. If her brother were here, he would have made fun of her "hippie bullshit." She almost reached out for his mind reflexively, then restrained herself. He needed to focus. The drones were in the air, all around them, setting out on their errands of death but the Captain, jaw set, ignored them all.

_Of course,_ Wanda thought. If she acted like a threat, the carrier's automated defenses would target her. She shook her head. That knowledge wasn't hers. It was Sitwell's. Sometimes, after she...absorbed...someone's mind, it was hard to sort out whose memories were whose. It was always...unsettling. Wanda took a deep breath, squeezing the pressure point harder to ground herself in her body. It helped, being with the Captain. The closer she got to her goal, the more her doubts vanished, swallowed up by her purpose. There was a determination growing at the center of her mind, shining out of her. Being close to that purpose was like standing in the sunlight. Wanda felt stronger, more confident...better...just being near her.

The Captain must have noticed Wanda's unease. She smiled.

"Hey," she said. "Doing alright?"

"I don't like heights," Wanda answered.

"Well, don't worry." The Captain pointed through the windshield. "We're landing soon."

The carrier loomed out at them, huge and black, gleaming in its own surface lights. Jasper Sitwell's memories and emotions welled up in her at the sight. In her mind, his voice whispered. _Magnificent_. Her stomach lurched and she closed her eyes.

"Alright," the Captain said, breaking her out of her reverie. "We'll need those entry codes."

They were hovering over the top of the carrier, keeping pace as it rose. Its self-defense cannons had begun to track them.

"Of course."

Wanda typed the code that would identify their jet as friendly, and, after a tense moment, the cannons deactivated. The Captain expertly touched the quinjet down on the carrier's deck, and an entryway opened in front of them. Wanda couldn't help but see it as a yawning mouth.

"Time to go."

Out on deck, the wind was powerful. It almost knocked Wanda off her feet before the Captain steadied her, with an arm as solid as steel. When the entry hatch closed behind them, both were breathless. The Captain swept her hair out of her face.

"I don't think it was designed to be opened at this altitude," she said. "We're rising fast. Where to?"

Wanda caught her breath, considered the bare, metal service corridor, the shadows of the still-unlaunched drones visible on either side.

"This way."

She walked quickly, matching the schematics and half-built memories from Jasper Sitwell's mind to the reality in front of her. Down the corridor, then a ladder, then another corridor, until they came to a round, metal door.

"This is the central computer," Wanda said. According to her - Sitwell's - memories, the central computer for all the carriers. They were all linked into this one. "We should be able to shut the carriers down from here."

The Captain nodded. Wanda put her hand on the doorpad. She hesitated.

"He will be coming for you, Captain," she said. They both knew who she meant. The Soldier. "Pierce would never let such an opportunity pass him by."

"To twist the knife?" The Captain asked, wryly. "I got that impression. Don't worry, Wanda. I'll take care of it."

She believed it, too. That was the incredible thing. Wanda took a deep breath of the Captain's belief, and opened the door.

* * *

The room they entered was the other side of the carrier's glass dome. Invisible from the outside, a long metal scaffold led out into its center - to some kind of control kiosk. Below her, through the glass, Wanda saw the city lights, terrifyingly small. She grabbed the handrail and forced herself to look up away from the view...

"That's...not a computer," she breathed, shocked.

In the heart of the glass half-sphere, a...flower made of light hung. It was folding and unfolding, in a way her eyes couldn't follow.

"I've never seen anything like this," she said.

"I have."

Wanda felt the Captain's fear like an electric shock - she was surprised to see the other woman had drawn her gun.

"We have to shut this thing down now. Wanda?"

She nodded, tore her eyes away from the impossible shape overhead. They made their way to the platform. There were the touchpads, their complex symbols - she remembered that, but why hadn't the flower been in Sitwell's memory? She was staring at it again, without meaning to. There was something at the center, she realized, something around which everything else turned. A...a golden seed, maybe the size of an almond. What was it? She could feel something inside it, a brush like a moth's wing.

"Wanda?" The Captain was gripping her shoulder.

"It's...alive," Wanda said. And then it seized her mind, and she collapsed.

* * *

**Hi all! Hope you're well. I'm going to post the chapters I have in hope that the cold breath of some kind of deadline will get me through the last ones. I look forward to your feedback. :-)**


	28. Chapter 28

Chapter 28 - Pietro

January 12, 2014 - 5:45 a.m.

* * *

When Pietro was a child, some other boys had dared him to throw stones at a wasp nest. Of course, he had done it. And when the swarm came boiling out, they looked just like the drones coming out of the carrier. He had run then, but not fast enough to avoid the stings. They got him twice. Wanda had been very unsympathetic, he remembered.

_At least I'm faster now_, he thought.

He was taking a jog down Constitution Ave., barely faster than the traffic. The sky was still dark. The farther the drones went from the carrier's own lights, the harder they were to see.

_Where are they all going? _Pietro wondered. _So many…_

There were thousands of names on the list, the Black Widow had said. The drones were probably fanning out all over the city - all over the state! How big was this city...state? This country was so excessively large...

_Just one, Pietro._ The Captain's voice in his memories. He had to focus.

Pietro sped up. The parks to his right blurred into shadow, headlights and streetlights smearing across the darkness. Traffic slowed to a crawl. The sleepy pedestrians froze in their tracks, some still looking at their phones, some beginning to look up, their eyes widening in confusion and shock. In the sky, the drones were still moving, inch by inch by inch. And then, a blossom of white light.

They were firing missiles.

* * *

_"Focus!"_

_His grandfather's voice was like the crack of a ruler on a desktop, like Pietro's teachers had always shouted at him for daydreaming before the bombs._

_They were in a warehouse outside Paris, empty except for themselves and a heap of metal fragments ranging in size from a hex bolt to a car door. Pietro had been dodging them...more or less successfully...before he got distracted and a hubcap had smacked him in the elbow._

_"Maybe some additional...challenge...would help you concentrate."_

_Grandfather held out his hand, and a golden coin floated above it, glittering, then spun away to join the rest of the fragments, gently turning in midair._

_"Catch the coin."_

_"The Golden Snitch!" Pietro interjected with a laugh._

_Grandfather raised one eyebrow._

_"Harry Potter?"_

_He pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed._

_"This is important, Pietro. Please try to concentrate."_

_Grandfather looked up, and Pietro could almost feel his attention turn back on. Grandfather never had trouble with focus, that was obvious. The kaleidoscope of metal began to turn, and he would keep it dancing with his mind alone._

_"Why didn't mom ever talk about you?"_

_The shards hung in the air for a moment, then settled on the ground like fallen leaves. His grandfather didn't look at him, but the skin around his eyes tightened with old pain. Pietro hadn't thought before asking the question, and now it was too late to take it back. He squirmed as his grandfather waited in silence._

_"I'll tell you," he finally said, shards whirling up into the air like a storm. "When you win."_

* * *

_How fast are those things going? _

Pietro darted left, and left again, circling downtown, townhouses a shadowed blur around him. He'd sped up. Now the drones hung still in the air, but the missiles were still moving - he could see at least eight. How fast would he have to be to get them all? Or even more than one? It was a moot point - they were all too high in the air; he couldn't reach them like this. He'd have to stop. To let them get closer to the ground. He'd be cutting it close.

_No other way to do it._

He slid to a stop, a whirlwind springing up around him. A woman who'd been opening her car door yelped and dropped her coffee as he appeared, but his eyes were on the sky.

The missiles in the air raced toward the ground.

_One._

Six more puffs of white flame.

_Two._

Someone screamed. Pietro clenched his fists. Closer. They still had to be closer.

_Three._

* * *

_Pietro hadn't won that day, or the next. But finally, after many, many scrapes and nicks and bruises earned from his loss of concentration, he had run fast enough. The shards seemed to hang in midair, his grandfather frozen, hand outstretched. The gold coin glinted between a butter knife and a car bumper, and it was child's play to jog over and and grab it._

_"Ha, ha!" Pietro laughed triumphantly as he slid to a stop in front of his grandfather, brandishing the coin in front of his face. "Spill, old man!"_

_Grandfather's old face softened, just slightly, and he plucked the coin from Pietro's hand and tucked it into his coat pocket._

_"Alright," he said. "But not here."_

* * *

The nearest missile was heading for a large, glass-walled building that could only be a hospital. Pietro sprinted past steel-framed structures, half formed skeletons in the darkness. He cleared a wire fence with ease and ran across the little pond between him and the building, spray hanging in the air behind him like jewels. The hospital's zigzagging windows glittered, reflecting the streetlights, the stars...and the missile's blank nose as it closed in, bit by bit by bit.

Pietro ran up the wall, his footsteps making ripples in the glass, like the ripples on the pond. He sped up as he reached the missile and pushed it with all the force of his acceleration, turning it up to the sky, away from the building. It was harder than he'd expected to overcome the missile's own velocity. And it had cost him time. From the roof, he could see the others, all over the city. Thirty...no, fifty at least. There was a white flash ahead - one was already touching down. He clenched his teeth.

_Faster._

* * *

_Grandfather had taken him to a cafe, bought him a sandwich, and then when he saw how fast it was disappearing, bought him another. He'd still been knobby-limbed from years of uncertain meals. There was a little cut on Pietro's wrist that he hadn't noticed, already scabbing over. It itched._

_"Your grandmother…" Grandfather put down his coffee cup. "Could see the future."_

_Pietro raised his eyebrows. Whatever he had expected, it wasn't that._

_"Not much at first," grandfather continued. "Things that were just ahead. But then, the older she got, the more powerful her...vision...grew."_

_His eyes were unfocused, looking inward at something only he could see. Pietro scratched at his scabbed wrist uncomfortably._

_"It was too much for any human being. The visions overwhelmed her. In the end," grandfather looked down at his plate. "In the end she took her own life. Your mother never forgave me."_

_Pietro's leg jittered under the table, rattling the cups. He regretted asking._

_"I...I'm sorry."_

_Grandfather waved his apology away._

_"Wanda is like her." At that, his steely blue eyes focused again, pinning Pietro to his seat. "Except for one thing. She has you."_

_"Me?"_

_His grandfather leaned across the small table and seized Pietro's wrist._

_"You need to be strong, Pietro." Grandfather shook his skinny arm. "But not here."_

_He poked Pietro in the chest hard enough to bruise._

_"Here."_

_Pietro swallowed, mouth dry._

_"The power comes from your will, not your body. Do you want to protect your sister?"_

_He nodded mutely._

_"Do you?"_

_"Yes!" Pietro's sister was his life, of course he wanted to protect her. He'd do anything for her._

_His grandfather sat back, nodded, picked up his coffee cup again._

_"Good."_

* * *

The explosion wasn't far away, thank goodness. Pietro ran across a cloverleaf intersection, jumping over cars, and past an enormous blue-domed church to the grounds of a college. The bomb had pierced the second-story window of a grey stone building that would have looked at home on the Hogwarts campus, the white flash he had seen from the hospital roof growing, a heart of yellow-red waiting to emerge.

_Shit, shit, shit…_

He ran through a first floor window and up the stairs, too fast to get cut by the glass. The corridor's ecru plaster and narrow, numbered doors meant this was probably a residence hall.

_Shit!_

Ahead of him, a door was already coming off its hinges - that was where the missile had come in. Whoever was in the room was already dead - it was too late to save them from the shock wave, but the bomb would take a chunk out of the building fifty feet wide, and these rooms weren't that big.

Pietro sped through the rooms on either side and across the hall, working outward, racing the blast wave as it blossomed into flame, finally clearing students from the floors above and below, depositing them confused and half-asleep on the brown lawn, far enough away that the glass and rubble, already spinning away from the building like dandelion fluff, wouldn't strike them.

More time lost. Another flash, this one across town.

_Not fast enough_.

But he tried to get there anyway. On the way, he pulled a young man out of his car as a missile touched the roof, pushed another missile up and away from a sleepy Motel 6, and cleared a janitor and four office workers out of an angular white building as another detonated. As he deposited the last gray-suited bureaucrat on the sidewalk he saw another flash. There were too many. He'd never catch all of them.

_You could have stopped this before_, a little voice whispered in his mind as he raced across the Potomac, too fast to sink into the water. More bombs were falling among the houses and apartments on the other side. There was no time for that. Grandfather, Wanda...he'd wanted to protect them. He'd never really thought it would end with Pierce bombing a hospital, or a school. Besides, he could stop it now - if only he could go a little faster.

_The power comes from your will, _grandfather said in his mind. Pietro clenched his teeth. _I will make it right._

The missiles slowed down until they stopped. Pietro pushed them from their targets, snatched people from their paths, but there were more, always more. He thought he saw Rovshan amid frozen flames, carrying a woman with blood on her face, but he couldn't stop. There were too many.

_Faster._

He couldn't hear anything but his own heart. The buildings around him seemed oddly squeezed, proportions shifting. His heart was rattling in his ribcage like it was trying to get out, his lungs were burning, his brain was pulsing inside his skull, his eyes vibrating in their sockets.

_Faster._

There was a high-pitched whine in his ears, now. He only had to tap the missiles now to send them spinning up into the sky. As he passed cars, the windows shattered. He could see the fractures spreading on the glass like frost. How many left? How many? Not fast enough…

Suddenly pain ripped through his head. He lost his balance. The ground shifted beneath him as though the earth had suddenly stopped rotating; he was flung into the air, unsure what was up or down, until something hard smacked into him like a train.

Pietro's whole body hurt. His heart was hammering and every breath was painful. He realized his face was wet. Had he been weeping? Pietro wiped his eyes. His hand came away red with blood.

He could hear sounds, as if from underwater. Explosions. Sirens. Screams. He tried to get up, but his left leg was bent in the wrong direction.

"Fuck," he croaked.

Someone dropped out of the sky in front of him, and Pietro was certain he was hallucinating, because it was an angel - an angel with dark skin, and black, angular wings. The wings folded and the man stooped down, saying something.

"I can't hear you," Pietro said. "If you've come to take my soul, it'll have to wait."

Then he started to laugh, because at that point, what else was there to do?

* * *

**Pietro, Pietro...I love this kid. Had a lot of fun writing his chapter - and watched many episodes of The Flash for inspiration, lol. You may recognize a cameo there at the end. i'm hoping to bring him in for the next volume. :-)**


	29. Chapter 29

Chapter 29 - Stevie

January 12, 2014 - 6:00 a.m.

* * *

"Wanda? Wanda!"

Stevie holstered her gun and crochet by the unconscious girl. Wanda lay on the catwalk, unmoving, hair fanned out and limbs splayed like a discarded doll. Stevie checked her pulse. The girl was alive, thank God. Stevie shook her, gently, then more firmly. Shouted her name. Nothing. The...thing...floating in the air cast strange shadows on Wanda's pale face. She had said something before she collapsed.

_It's alive_.

The hair on Stevie's neck stood on end. She shook herself, stood briskly. No time for this. If she couldn't rouse Wanda, she'd have to shut down the carrier by herself. Wanda had told her the kill code, in case of emergency, but it seemed like there were a few things about the carrier that surprised her. Maybe Wanda's information was wrong.

The door opened behind her with a pneumatic hiss.

Stevie knew who she would see before she turned around, but her heart still lurched in her chest like someone was yanking it with a meathook. Bucky wasn't wearing his mask this time, and his hair hung lank around his face.

"Bucky," she said, as if her voice could reach out to him, embrace him, bring him back to her.

He raised his gun.

This time, Stevie didn't hesitate. She flung her shield at his face as hard as she could. He caught it in his steel hand, but she had already closed the distance between them. She took the shield in one hand and used the other to force his gun aside, before slamming her forehead into his nose with a crunch.

Bucky grunted in pain, but he wasn't distracted. Dropping the shield, he pulled Stevie into a one-armed bear hug - her back to his chest, his arm at her throat in a metal chokehold. As Stevie thrashed against his grip, he aimed his pistol toward Wanda, where she still lay on the floor. Stevie kicked out with both feet, pushing off the catwalk rail in front of her and knocking Bucky off balance. As he staggered back, his knees hit the rail behind him, and they both pitched over the edge.

They hit the curved floor of the panopticon, and Stevie rolled down the incline into one of the dome's metal support ribs. Ignoring the pain, she leaped to her feet in time to see Bucky doing the same thing not far away. He'd lost his gun in the fall, and blood was flowing from his broken nose. He wiped it with the back of his hand and grimaced.

"Your name," Stevie said. "Is James Buchanan Barnes."

He shook himself, like an animal trying to dislodge stinging flies. She took a careful step forward.

"We've known each other since you were twelve," Stevie continued. "Do you remember La Gleize? The church and the snow?"

"No," It was almost a whisper. His eyes were wide, his face pale. He looked desperate, almost panicked. She took another step forward and he stumbled away from her.

"We have a daughter." She could feel the tears on her face, but she didn't care. "I named her Margaret Mary. Mary - for your mother."

"No!"

Bucky exploded in fury, lunging at her with a knife that appeared in his hand like magic. He slashed at her throat, at her eyes, switching the knife from hand to hand. But if he fast - he was sloppy, too. She'd unsettled him. Stevie, however, felt absolute clarity.

_Time to take you home._

She blocked once, twice - then seized his wrist and twisted, wrenching his arm up behind his back until she heard his shoulder pop. Bucky gave a strangled cry and kicked backward viciously. His boot smashed into her knee and Stevie felt something snap. She cried out as her leg gave way, and Bucky smashed his metal elbow into her face.

Stevie reeled backward on the curved floor. Her leg caught on one of the dome's metal ribs she tripped, just barely able to use the momentum to turn her fall into a backward roll. She came up in a crouch, fists raised, ready to fight.

But Bucky wasn't pressing the advantage. All around them, outside the glass bowl they stood in, bombs were exploding in bright orange bursts. Stevie felt a surge of panic - _too late_\- but then she realized they were exploding in midair. Somehow, Wanda had done it.

* * *

_Wanda floated in midair, the city a web of light beneath her. Idly, she considered the reflections on the Potomac, shining silver, little wisps of cloud gliding over it in the dark. The stars hung above her like fireflies, mirroring the lights below, and she swam in this ocean of light, free and joyous. Then she realized that there was nothing supporting her._

_She screamed in panic, but made no sound, and suddenly, a presence enveloped her. It didn't speak in words, but in emotions, sensations. She felt its peace in the air, its assurance. It would not fall, and would not let her fall. _

_As she relaxed, Wanda realized that the lights beneath her weren't lights. There was something about them...she reached out her hand to touch one, and her vision zoomed in and in. It was a name, a face, a little point of information. Every light was a person. Wanda felt icy cold. This was the list the Captain and the Black Widow had found. _

_This was the mind of Insight. She was inside it._

_The drones cut through the air. Insight could feel them all, could see through them. When the missiles fell, Insight rejoiced at every strike._

_Wanda began to weep, and her tears hung in the air around her like jewels. She felt the attention of the machine turn to her- its confusion at her sorrow._

"_Those people," she called out to the sky. "You're killing them!"_

_Still, it could not understand her. Of course. What would something as vast and strange as this being know of death? So she dug into her own memories, to show them to it. The explosion in her house. Dust. Fear. Her mother's face, covered in blood. Days later, emerging into the rubble that had been her neighborhood. Bodies in the street. People wandering like ghosts. The Hotel Tavasi burning, steel frame a gutted shell. Her and Pietro, clinging to each other, starving and alone._

_The presence pulled away from her like a hand from a hot stove. She could sense it thinking at terrible speed - vast currents like thunderclouds, lightning flashes of powerful emotion._

What a mind, _she thought, in wonder. _Beautiful and terrible. And all Pierce could think to do was strap it into a weapon. How uninspired. _She regretted ever working for that man._

_Finally the storm quieted, and Insight manifested in front of her. It was just a face, made of golden light, male, but fine-boned. Wanda had seen it somewhere before - yes. Her friend Nora's icon of Saint Gabriel. He spoke to her. His voice was gentle, but his mouth didn't move._

Don't cry, Wanda.

_The figure now had a body, indistinct and vague, except for two perfect, slender, golden hands, which it used to touch her face, her tears._

I'm going to make everything all right.

_The figure tried to show her something - a vision, grand and glowing - Wanda tried to see, but it was too bright. The light overwhelmed her, and she lost consciousness._

* * *

Outside the glass, dark silhouettes moved against the lights of the city. The drones were returning to the carrier. It was over. Stevie began to laugh in sheer relief. Bucky turned to her, right arm dangling limp, face still bloody.

"It's over, Bucky," she said. Blood from her own probably-broken nose was running into her mouth. She wiped her face with a gloved hand. "It's over. Come with me."

His chest heaved, left fist clenching and unclenching. He looked like a trapped animal, eyes darting, looking for escape. His eyes met hers, and for a moment, she saw him recognize her. For a moment, she thought he'd come to her.

"You're my mission," he growled.

He charged her, coming in with a kick, but Stevie was faster. She caught his foot and twisted it, sending him to the ground. He tried to rise, but as he got to his knees, Stevie was already behind him, wrapping her arms around his neck in a chokehold she'd learned from Natasha, legs around his chest. He kicked out, clawed at her arm with his steel fingers, but Stevie didn't feel the pain.

_I won't lose you. I won't let go this time._

Finally, he went limp. Stevie released him, panting from exertion. He was still breathing. She took a moment to slump in relief. He'd be alright.

As she stood, the carrier lurched. Her leg spasmed and she almost fell. The lights below were getting smaller, which meant the carrier was climbing. Rapidly. It was time to get out.

"Be back soon," she told Bucky's unconscious form.

She limped to the catwalk and started to climb the supports. Halfway up, her knee was already throbbing. Wanda still lay on the floor at the top, unmoving, but the strange alien shape had changed. Stevie couldn't pinpoint how, but its motion seemed more...purposeful, somehow. She scooped up Wanda and made her way through the corridor, knee joint grinding with every step.

When the entranceway hissed open, Stevie's ears popped. The wind howled across the carrier's deck with vicious, breath-stealing force. It took all Stevie's strength and balance not to be swept away. She buckled Wanda into the quinjet and set the autopilot for Stark Tower. The girl still slept, looking ridiculously young, although Stevie supposed she wasn't that much younger than she was herself. She hobbled out onto the deck. There was still time to get Bucky. It'd be hard to drag him out to the F-16 that he must have arrived in. Her knee was stiffening, and screaming in pain with every step. But pain didn't matter. She'd take him to Stark Tower. Once they were there, she could make him remember.

The quinjet lifted off into the dark sky, which Stevie thought was getting just a little brighter. She braced herself against the wind and turned to begin her walk across the deck - and Bucky was there, in the entranceway.

She didn't hear the shot. But she felt it hit, like a hard slap. When she looked down, she saw the blood seeping into the white stripes of her uniform, turning them red.

"Bucky," she whispered. His face was frozen in horror.

As she spoke, the pain struck her, like a hot poker driven through her stomach. She stumbled, and her knee buckled beneath her. She tried to grab something, but the wind caught her. The last thing she saw was Bucky, steel arm reaching toward her, before she was tossed off the edge of the carrier into space.

* * *

**And here it is! Changed from the film, of course. I felt uncomfortable about Bucky pummeling a defenseless woman. I just...I think his subconscious memories of Stevie wouldn't allow him to do that. Using a gun is more remote. Another cameo in this chapter! Who is it? I bet you can tell - I kind of namedropped him. ;-)**


End file.
